Blog Series: Strengthening CT's Behavioral Health Workforce for Children
This ongoing special series from CHDI takes a closer look at the impact of Connecticut’s behavioral health workforce challenges on children, families, providers, and schools – and explores recommendations from the Strategic Plan to Strengthen CT's Behavioral Health Workforce released in late 2023.
Blog: Helping Connecticut Schools Navigate the Changing Tides in Youth Mental Health
January 16, 2025
CHDI's Jeana Bracey unpacks some of the current challenges impacting Connecticut schools, highlights ways the state can bolster school mental health efforts, and shares resources available now to help schools chart a course to calmer waters.
Blog: 7 Policy Strategies States are Using to Address the Behavioral Health Workforce Shortage
October 28, 2024
We review seven key policy strategies being used by states across the country to strengthen, grow, and diversify their behavioral health workforce and highlight what some of these policies might look like in Connecticut.
Blog: Helping New Clinicians Navigate a Strained Behavioral Health System: A Recipe for Success
June 25, 2024
CHDI's Katie Newkirk and Kellie Randall identify strategies to support an influx of less experienced clinicians as they navigate a children's behavioral health system under strain.
Blog: Delays Ahead: The Ripple Effect of Behavioral Health Workforce Shortages in Intermediate Levels of Care for Children
May 23, 2024
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. CHDI's Aleece Kelly explains how delays at the intermediate level have a particularly large ripple effect across the rest of the system.
Blog: Connecticut is Losing Our Most Experienced Community-Based Behavioral Health Providers. Here’s How We Can Keep Them.
April 5, 2024
CHDI's Jack Lu explains new data analysis from our team that reveals that Connecticut is not just losing clinicians overall – we’re losing our most experienced and effective clinicians at a rapid rate.
Blog: 7 Steps Connecticut Can Take in 2024 to Strengthen the Children’s Behavioral Health Workforce
March 26, 2024
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.
Blog: To Improve Access and Build Connecticut’s Behavioral Health Workforce, We Need to Talk About Reimbursement Rates
February 26, 2024 (Updated August 2024)
CHDI President & CEO Jeff Vanderploeg explains how Connecticut's Medicaid reimbursement rates for key behavioral health services lag behind peer states and have not kept up with inflation - and argues that increasing rates is necessary to maintain access to children's behavioral health care in our state.
CHDI Releases New Strategic Plan to Strengthen Connecticut's Behavioral Health Workforce
January 3, 2024
CHDI and our partners have released a comprehensive new strategic plan to guide Connecticut in building a sustainable workforce capable of meeting the behavioral health needs of all children, youth, and families in our state. Read an overview here.