2026-advocacy-piece

9 Invest in the Behavioral Health Workforce The capacity of community- based providers of mental health and substance use treatment and supports is limited by the workforce they employ, a workforce marked by unprecedented vacancies, high turnover and non- competitive wages. The items being recommended to support the workforce – recruitment and retention bonuses, significant funding for the behavioral health loan redemption program and incentives for field placements – are requested because they are critically needed to sustain even the current levels of staffing, let alone a more adequate one. Licensed Clinical Social Workers (LCSWs), Licensed Professional Counselors (LPCs) and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists (LMFTs) are among the most difficult professionals to recruit and retain, and, given the many critical roles these licensed staff have, organizations are reluctant to add supervision of interns to their responsibilities. The reasons are many, but two stand out. The clinical services of these professionals are in such great demand that allocating hours to supervision directly decreases access to care for those in need. Additionally, supervision Recruitment and retention bonuses were shown to be successful when federal funds were provided for those purposes during the pandemic. With the higher-than- average retirements since that time and lower number of entrants to the field, it is essential that experienced staff be retained and the number of individuals entering the behavioral health field be increased. Regarding the latter, it is imperative for the behavioral health loan redemption program to be expanded. The funding for this program was cut by almost half in FY2026, decreasing from $7 million in FY2025 to $3.75 million. This program is key to augmenting the behavioral healthcare workforce pipeline. Beyond impacting access to care, the current workforce shortages also have led to organizations finding it extremely difficult to serve as field placement sites where students can intern to meet the requirements they need to graduate and/or obtain licensure. is not reimbursed, thereby directly decreasing organizations’ revenue. Providing incentives to providers to be field placement sites would support making more clinical staff available for this critical purpose and be beneficial to the workforce pipeline. NJAMHAA also recommends passage of S2123/A3577 to bring accountability to New Jersey’s licensing Boards. The workforce study commissioned by the Department of Children and Families, in collaboration with the Department of Human Services, in 2023 confirmed that licensing delays preclude the hiring of clinicians. Hiring an individual who has a pending application for licensure would result in paying top level wages for staff who cannot work to the top of that potential license. The legislation would require a report on the number of outstanding applications, the average time for approving an application, and a list of the most common errors on applications rendering them incomplete, among other data points including staff costs, recruitment and retention initiatives and the status of information technology infrastructure. Such reporting requirements represent a first step toward improving the licensure process by clearly identifying where problems exist.