As the General Assembly prepares to meet in January, Governor Glenn Youngkin is asking members to invest $160 million in transforming Virginia's behavioral health system.
Senator Creigh Deeds is a Democrat from Bath County who says the governor is taking a crisis-first approach. "I think it holds a great deal of promise, and I want to make sure it's implemented," Deeds says. "But I want to make sure that we do a lot of other things too. I want to make sure that we raise the reimbursement rates on Medicaid. I want to make sure that we raise the pay for CSB employees so that we have the staff to provide the services that will keep people out of crisis."
Brian Kelmar is executive director and cofounder of the nonprofit Legal Reform for Intellectually and Developmentally Disabled. "People mention the words mental health and they always assume it always includes people with developmental and intellectual disabilities," Kelmar notes. "Mental illness is something that you can cure or treat but developmental or intellectual disabilities are something that you are born with and that you can't cure. And they're not treated the same."
Kelmar says lawmakers need to make sure they have separate response teams, one for people who are having a mental health crisis and then a separate response team for people with developmental or intellectual disabilities — a distinction that he says is not clear in the current proposal.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
