D.C. could see budget cuts to youth behavioral services

The Lead

One story you need to know this week.

Bracing for Budget Cuts

Some D.C. Council members, advocates, parents and educators are raising alarm bells over potential cuts to D.C.’s youth behavioral services. The city says the changes could save $7 million. I talked with parents and teachers about their concerns.

Here’s the top of my article:

Jamelle Harris was driving when her elementary-aged son began to have a breakdown. He had long struggled with mental and behavioral health issues, but this time she just couldn’t de-escalate. She sat on the side of the road, unsure how to get back to their Southeast D.C. home without her child trying to throw himself out of the moving vehicle.

At a loss, she called the Child and Adolescent Mobile Psychiatric Service.

The hotline workers were able to soothe him. Later, when she needed tools to address mental health episodes at home, the service, known as ChAMPS, helped her develop a safety plan and put together a sensory box full of her son’s favorite things to help calm him down. And when she recognized her son needed more intensive help but worried about calling the police on a young Black boy, she trusted ChAMPS to make sure he was taken away in an ambulance, not a police car.

“I can’t imagine what it would be like if we didn’t have ChAMPS to call if there’s an emergency,” Harris, a 32-year-old mother of two, said.

ChAMPS is an emergency service for children and teens ages 6-17 who are having mental or behavioral crises. Under D.C.’s budget proposal, the program would be shuttered, part of a broader slate of cuts that would also phase out the city’s contracts with a network of community-based organizations providing clinicians to D.C. schools. The proposed changes would save roughly $7 million dollars by moving those responsibilities to the city’s Department of Behavioral Health, which operates its own general crisis response team.

In a moment when the city is grappling with teen behavior – from “teen takeovers” to viral Chipotle brawls – and conversations about resources for the city’s youth have come under a national microscope, some fear it’s a dangerous time to disrupt the behavioral health care system.

On the Ground

My observations from the scene of the crime, the courthouse, the protest, the construction site – wherever the news is this week.

Protesting the Arch

A group of protestors rallied near the Arlington Memorial Bridge for three very rainy days in protest of President Donald Trump’s planned 250-foot triumphal arch. I headed over Tuesday afternoon to check it out.

The protesters were part of Third Act DMV, a local chapter of a national progressive organization of Americans over 60. They told me they were there in defense of veterans, history and good taste.

Lisa Finn, a member of Third Act Virginia, said they planned the protest for Memorial Day because they viewed the arch as disrespectful toward the veterans buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Three Vietnam War veterans have sued the Trump administration over the arch, arguing the structure would obstruct “the symbolic and inspiring view” from the cemetery to the Lincoln Memorial.

Clara Sachs, a certified tour guide, said she was furious about the arch. Shortly before his assassination, then-President John F. Kennedy famously stood in front of the Arlington House, looked out at the view of D.C. and declared, “I could stay here forever.” He’s now buried at that site.

When Sachs gives the tour, she knows she’s looking at the same view that deeply moved a president 63 years ago.

“I don’t want to lose that,” she said.

Gary Rush, 72, had more aesthetic issues. “It’s just the idea that this one man with incredibly tacky taste – he just has really bad taste – is going to wreak havoc on D.C. just to satisfy his ego is disgusting.”

In a statement to me, a White House spokesperson accused the protesters of having a “severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

“President Trump is making the White House and our Nation’s Capital and giving it the glory it deserves during our nation’s historic semiquincentennial celebration – something everyone should celebrate,” said spokesperson Davis R. Ingle.

By the end of the protest Tuesday evening, the crowd in the grassy patch behind the Lincoln Memorial was a bit bedraggled. Only a couple dozen people marched over the bridge toward the cemetery and back.

But what they lacked in numbers, they made up for in wit. One sign read “Honor the fallen, not the felon” – a nod to Trump’s 34 felony convictions. Another featured the McDonald’s logo with the message: “Don’t you think you’ve had enough Golden Arches?”

My Latest Side Quest

Field notes from my most recent D.C. adventure.

I was under the weather this weekend, so I didn’t have much time or energy for side-questing. But I'm back to full strength and raring to go: Is there a niche D.C. group I need to interview? A local mystery you want solved? A neighborhood listserv drama you need explained?

Drop me a line and let me know!