To help satisfy the growing demand and need for preventative mental health services for young people in Maine, Sweetser is meeting the moment at a great financial loss.

Last year, we lost $376,000 on our school-based therapy services. So far this year, our program is operating at a $438,000 deficit. These negative margins are unsustainable and they’re being experienced by other providers as well. We prop up the cost of school-based therapy using other program revenues and donations because this is a best practice in treatment delivery.

According to a study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, young people are more comfortable accessing services through school-based clinics. Because children spend the majority of their day in educational settings, schools play a critical role in providing a safe, non-stigmatizing and supportive natural environment in which children and families can have access to prevention, early intervention and treatment.

Sweetser provides treatment in more than 25 school districts and in more than 100 schools, including elementary, middle and high schools. Sweetser has approximately 80 school-based clinicians across the state of Maine and we served more than 2,300 students last year in schools, from Kittery to Bangor.

We’re embedded in school campuses, working alongside school-hired counselors and school social workers to form a continuum of care to support students’ mental health needs. Each role has its own specific purpose. Working together, the team provides a comprehensive support network for the child and family. Mental health support takes a village and providers like us are one important part of that puzzle.

But how’s this for a news headline?

“100 Maine public schools no longer provide youth mental health treatment.”

If we don’t find a path forward with the Legislature, that’s not a faint possibility, it’s an absolute reality.

Sweetser places licensed professionals in schools at no cost to the school district. We bill the student’s insurance, but the reimbursement rate only covers the actual face-to-face time that the clinician spends in session with the child. There is so much more to the position than simply back-to-back therapy sessions. It requires full integration within a school setting and a number of key activities that we, as a provider, simply cannot bill for. This creates a financial gap that we can’t fill alone.

Common-sense activities like meeting with educators about how to remove barriers to the students’ learning, getting parental consent paperwork signed, traveling to families’ homes for therapy, required continuing education training, documentation, family communication and dealing with urgent mental health or emotional crises that arise on campus are all not billable.

L.D. 2002, introduced by Maine Speaker of the House Rachel Talbot Ross, would allow the Department of Education to setup a grant-like incentive for schools to contract with a behavioral health provider to provide school based therapy services. It would financially stablize the existing roster of school-based clinicians – not just at Sweetser, but with providers across the state. It would also incentivize school districts and schools without such mental health professionals to work with providers to ensure proper access to therapy and emotional supports.

L.D. 2002 will not only put us on a path towards sustainability by reducing the deficits being absorbed by community agencies, it will allow providers like us to recruit and retain highly qualified clinicians, pay clinicians a livable salaried wage, help school districts provide mental health services and ultimately avoid program closure. It’s a win for students, families, schools and our whole state.

Maine is poised to have a budget surplus of several hundred million dollars. This bill is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost and risk of incarceration and other long-term strains on our systems if youth mental health challenges go unchecked and untreated. The time to invest in our children’s future is now. The time to act is now.