OPINION: State budget threatens Oregon children with homelessness, substance abuse
Published 4:45 pm Monday, May 29, 2023
- Marty Beyer
A teenager longs for his incarcerated father and struggles with feeling repeatedly rejected after multiple foster home placements and school changes. He and his mother are enjoying time together, arranged and supported by staff, as his mother continues her journey in sobriety. Years of trauma made trusting staff agonizingly slow, but he has discovered his artistic talent and school success is rewarding for the first time. This teenager is not on the street using substances to cope with his sadness because of trained staff in a therapeutic residential program. But his remarkable success — and that of so many vulnerable children in Oregon — is threatened by the failure of state agencies to include in their budgets the increased rates for behavioral health services already allocated by the legislature.
Oregon Health Authority, Oregon Youth Authority and DHS recommended higher reimbursement rates, but service providers will not receive this increase because state agencies are excluding the Behavior Rehabilitation Services allocations in their budget requests. At the current funding levels, most programs cannot pay staff salaries competitive with an increasingly wide array of other employment sectors. Many programs will be forced to close if the state does not raise reimbursement rates.
The failure of state agencies to include higher reimbursement rates in their budget requests is predictable: devastating placement instability, worsening rates of substance abuse, untreated mental health needs and homelessness among vulnerable children.
I have seen communities with exemplary foster care and residential programs funded so children and their caregivers receive mental health services of sufficient intensity and duration to ensure their recovery from adversity. Oregon can — and should — choose to be a leader in behavioral health funding to support children and youth in foster care and the juvenile system.
Contact your legislators to let them know it is intolerable to allow Oregon to fall even further behind in meeting the needs of our most vulnerable children.
