A counseling program in Alabama for people with HIV, helping them get into treatment and housing. A training program in New Hampshire for first responders learning how better to respond to people in mental health crises. Mental health counseling for children in Tennessee experiencing trauma.
On Wednesday, the funding for these and thousands of other programs was rescinded. The halt affected about 2,800 organizations across the nation offering mental health and substance use services, often on the front lines of the dual crises, in partnership with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Samhsa).
Directors of these programs woke up on Wednesday to a letter saying their funding from the US government had been cut, effective immediately. They scrambled to set up emergency meetings to go over the payroll, agonize over who would be laid off and trying to find other ways to keep their doors open and programs running.
On Thursday, they received a new notice: the federal award cancellations were “hereby reinstated”, according to a letter obtained by the Guardian. “Please disregard the prior termination notice and continue program activities,” the notice said.
“It’s whiplash,” said Reuben Rotman, president and CEO of the Network of Jewish Human Service Agencies, which provide mental health counseling and other services. It’s “incredibly disruptive” for organizations, and the communities that they serve, to have funding yanked, even when it is later restored, he said.
“If you’re doing the work and you’re reporting to the government and you’re in full compliance with everything, you’re not expecting your contract, with no warning and no communication from anybody” to be “abruptly terminated” in an email at 3am, Rotman said.
The biggest blow was not knowing whether they would be able to continue providing services, said Devin Lyall, founder of Wilkes Recovery Revolution in rural North Carolina.
“The threat to people that are already a vulnerable population, that are in care and receiving treatment and receiving help to rebuild lives, that that care might disappear overnight, I think is the biggest concern,” Lyall said.
Wilkes Recovery Revolution is in the third year of a five-year Samhsa grant of $300,000 a year, totaling one-fifth of their funding. The award covered transitional housing, peer support services, transportation to treatment, work and doctors’ appointments, and more. The programs were created because “there was a gap in our system of care here, and so individuals were falling through the cracks at no fault of their own”, said Lyall.
Participants in the housing program have done the hard work of going through treatment, finding employment and “becoming a part of the community again, and then a decision like that can set someone back”, Lyall said. While other projects with different funding sources would have continued, removing housing would’ve been like “pulling a piece of the puzzle out” of recovery.
When she received the letter saying that the program no longer aligned with the Trump administration’s funding priorities, it felt like “a direct hit”, Lyall said. Now that the funding has been restored, she’s still afraid it will be yanked again one day.
“If it can happen [on Wednesday], and that authority can be exercised with no warning and no transparency, no safeguards, then why can’t that happen again two weeks, a month, two months, three months down the road?” Lyall said.
That makes it difficult to know how to plan for the future, grantees said.
“It’s very difficult to feel any confidence that the funding is secure,” Rotman said. “We are in a very volatile state right now.”
The episode underscored a deeper issue, that “life-saving care cannot operate on instability”, said Saeeda Dunston, CEO of Elmcor Youth & Adult Activities Inc, a Black-led non-profit serving Queens communities hit hard by overdose and behavioral health disparities.
“If we are serious about addressing disparities impacting Black communities in overdose and behavioral health outcomes, we must invest in systems that can withstand political shifts and ensure care is available today and remains available for the long term,” Dunston said.
Rotman noted that “the safety net for the most vulnerable is most surely being eroded, and it’s raising a lot of concern”.
