In The News

Blog Series: Strengthening CT's Behavioral Health Workforce for Children

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Our new blog series takes a closer look at the impact of Connecticut’s behavioral health workforce challenges on children and families – and exploring solutions and recommendations from the Strategic Plan to Strengthen CT's Behavioral Health Workforce released last fall. Stay tuned for new posts throughout 2024.

— October 14, 2024

7 Policy Strategies States are Using to Address the Behavioral Health Workforce Shortage

Learn what states around the U.S. are doing to address the behavioral health workforce shortage - and what these strategies might look like here in Connecticut.

— June 25, 2024

Blog - Helping New Clinicians Navigate a Strained Behavioral Health System: A Recipe for Success

In the latest in our series on CT's behavioral health workforce challenges, Katie Newkirk and Kellie Randall identify strategies to support an influx of less experienced clinicians as they navigate a system under strain.

— May 23, 2024

Blog - Delays Ahead: The Ripple Effect of Behavioral Health Workforce Shortages in Intermediate Levels of Care for Children

Growing need and staffing shortages in the children's behavioral health system are impeding the flow of traffic between outpatient, intermediate, and intensive levels of care. Aleece Kelly explains how delays at the intermediate level have a particularly large ripple effect across the rest of the system.

— April 5, 2024

Blog: Connecticut is Losing Our Most Experienced Community-Based Behavioral Health Providers. Here’s How We Can Keep Them.

Connecticut has made great strides in children’s behavioral health services and has been recognized as a national leader in quality care. However, as my colleagues reported in a strategic plan last year, this strong foundation is being put at risk by two concurrent challenges: an increase in youth behavioral health needs and a growing shortage in the behavioral health workforce. Now, new data analysis from our team reveals that Connecticut is not just losing clinicians overall – we’re losing the most experienced and effective clinicians at a rapid rate.

— March 26, 2024

Blog: 7 Steps Connecticut Can Take in 2024 to Strengthen the Children’s Behavioral Health Workforce

In the third post in our blog series, Chief Program Officer Jason Lang highlights seven steps Connecticut can still take this year to ease the behavioral health workforce shortage and put us on a path to becoming a state where every child and family can access behavioral health services, when and where they need them.

— February 26, 2024

Blog: To Improve Access and Build Connecticut’s Behavioral Health Workforce, We Need to Talk About Reimbursement Rates

(Updated August 2024) For years now, behavioral health providers have been telling policymakers that the public and private insurance reimbursement rates for their services have not kept pace with inflation or the full cost of providing high-quality care.

— January 3, 2024

CHDI Releases New Strategic Plan to Strengthen Connecticut's Behavioral Health Workforce

In November 2023, CHDI and our partners released a new strategic plan to guide the State in building a sustainable workforce capable of meeting the behavioral health needs of Connecticut's children, youth, and families.