After many long months of fierce debate between the two parties, on Thursday Virginia’s legislature finally passed a budget for the state.
The budget has good news for VOICE’s core behavioral health priorities.
Our organizing, together with our key coalition partners, delivered $68 million of investment into desperately-needed behavioral health priority areas, $60 million of which is new spending.
Specifically, the state has allocated $58 million for the establishment and expansion of Crisis Receiving Centers (up from $7.5 million last year) and $10 million (up from $0 last year) for hospital-based emergency psychiatric programs.
With new funding on the way, new Crisis Receiving Centers are being proposed across the state, including potential projects in the pipeline in our backyard of Northern Virginia.
Had the budget been passed in the spring during the usual time period for doing so, we believe that we would have seen even higher investment into our priorities. Nevertheless, this represents a major accomplishment that you should feel proud of.
VOICE: these investments will save lives. Hats off for your amazing work!!
Stayed tuned for updates on our progress engaging Gov. Youngkin and his administration on improving youth behavioral health outcomes in the Commonwealth, following up from our July 9th assembly.
You can read more about the final state budget here.
