2026-advocacy-piece

7 Strengthen and Expand Services to Better Meet the Needs of New Jersey’s Children and Youth New Jersey’s Children’s System of Care has also made tremendous strides in service delivery and outcomes with innovation and expansion. Most recently, the ACT pilot for children and youth in Cape May and Atlantic Counties, modeled on the adult Program of Assertive Community Treatment (PACT), has shown great success. The Department of Children and Families (DCF) is seeking to expand this program, which serves ages five to 20 and has a multi- disciplinary team that includes, but is not limited to, a psychiatrist or APN, nurse, peers, occupational therapist, clinical staff, crisis mentor and more. Ideally, youth are served in their homes. Another success has been the New Jersey Statewide Student Support Services (NJ4S) program, currently in its third year. This program operates statewide from 15 regional hubs, each including a director, mental health crisis-prevention consultants, and mental health counselors. Hubs provide three tiers of services. Services in the first tier are available for all students in the state, their parents, and school faculty. These include prevention and skill-building workshops on various topics such as substance use, conflict resolution, W hen he was 10 years old in 2004, Dean was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome (TS). His school guidance counselor invited a representative from the New Jersey Center for Tourette Syndrome and Associated Disorders (NJCTS), to provide vital education for Dean, his classmates and the faculty and staff. With this newfound understanding, Dean’s school experience improved significantly, but socially, he still felt alone. Luckily for Dean and his family, that year, NJCTS Founder Faith Rice started a camp retreat weekend for families facing a TS diagnosis. This retreat, held at YMCA Camp Bernie in Hunterdon County, brought families together for education, support and fun. For Dean, the camp was transformative. He met life-long friends with TS, gained confidence and decided to become an advocate. Today, Dean is a graduate of Rollins College and runs a successful construction business with his brother. He has reconnected with NJCTS, eager to help children with TS understand their diagnosis and become advocates. and lifestyle changes to improve mental health. The second tier is offered to smaller groups of students who need short-term services targeted to address specific issues. The third tier, offering the highest level of service, provides brief clinical interventions to individual students. Despite these and other successful innovations, many challenges remain in providing timely, appropriate behavioral health services to New Jersey’s children and youth. Inadequate rates and contracts threaten some programs with reductions or closure and contribute to staff recruitment and retention difficulties. Among the programs that need investment to ensure fiscal sustainability and workforce stability are School Based Youth Services Programs (SBYSPs), children’s Partial Hospital Programs (PHPs) and Care Management Organizations (CMOs). A total of $23 million is needed to strengthen all three of these programs and ensure they can continue providing their critical services - $3 million for SYBSPs, $3.2 million for Children’s PHPs and $16.7 million for CMOs. DCF’s spending plan for the $29 million for children’s mental health services that was rolled over from the FY2025 budget to the current FY2026 budget would have addressed several workforce challenges. This was evident when DCF needed and was able to have $5.9 million of these funds released in November 2025 to distribute to all children’s out-of-home programs to stabilize provider capacity and support workforce retention and training. The $23 million remaining should be released and invested in SBYSPs, PHPs and CMOs. Investment is also needed to create additional inpatient beds for children and youth with behavioral health diagnoses and intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD), as well as for training of staff who serve this population in various settings. Currently, New Jersey has only ten Children’s Crisis Intervention Service (CCIS) beds dedicated to children and youth with these dual diagnoses. And even those cannot always be utilized, as there is insufficient staff who are adequately trained for these one-on-one services. Specialized training is also needed for staff in group homes, CMOs, Mobile Response and other children’s programs so they can properly assess, engage and serve children and youth with IDD.