Tammy Exum

We held our first Transforming Behavioral Health Policy and Planning Committee (TCB) meeting this week, in which we discussed potential legislative recommendation concepts for this upcoming session, including two potential concepts that stem from our System Infrastructure Workgroup, as well as the Crisis Continuum Subgroup. 

As you know, I proudly serve as one of the TCB tri-chairs.

The committee was formed three years ago and is charged with evaluating the availability and efficacy of prevention, early intervention, and behavioral health treatment services and options for children from birth to age eighteen and making recommendations to the General Assembly and executive agencies regarding the governance and administration of the behavioral health care system for children.

Regarding this week's meeting, the TCB contracted with the UConn Innovations Institute at the UConn School of Social Work to develop a Children’s Behavioral Health System of Data Infrastructure and Use of Data For System Improvement Report. The report, published last fall, recommended that “Connecticut establish a Children’s Behavioral Health Data Workgroup (“Data Workgroup”) with the expertise and capacity to plan and support strategies that strengthen the state’s behavioral health infrastructure, along with robust reporting mechanisms to ensure accountability.

We discussed our recommendation of establishing a data working group to develop a plan for a data integration process to link data related to children across executive branch agencies, through the Office of Policy and Management's integrated data system, and the Department of Children and Families, Department of Social Services, Department of Public Health, Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, Department of Education, Department of Developmental Services, Office of Health Strategy, and Office of Early Childhood for evaluation and assessment of programs, services, and outcomes in the children’s behavioral health system.​

An outside entity (CHDI) is contracted by DCF to serve as the Performance Improvement Centers for Mobile Crisis and Urgent Crisis Centers. The UCC PIC contract will expire on June 30th, 2026. ​

Crisis Continuum's recommendation to extend the Performance Improvement Center Contract for UCCs/Mobile Crisis also came up at the December meeting.

We discussed recommending that the Department of Children and Families (DCF) expand its contract to continue the collection of data and quality improvement efforts of the three community-based Urgent Crisis Centers through June 30th, 2027,  following the current contract deadline of June 30th, 2026.​

We'll vote on the recommendations at our next meeting in February.

We took a deep dive into another behavioral health issue that needs our attention: eating disorders, and the Connecticut Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity & Opportunity had an in-depth presentation prepared. Please see the reasons why through the illustrations below, as well as recommendations to move forward in addressing the issue.