Cal Cities opposes proposed funding cuts to mobile crisis services
By Caroline Grinder, legislative advocate (community services)
Cal Cities and a coalition of local governments and behavioral health advocates are signaling their opposition to a proposed cut in state funding that could force local governments to scale back or eliminate mobile crisis teams in advance of the Governor’s May budget revision.
Mobile crisis teams provide community-based support for behavioral health. In January, the Governor proposed shifting this benefit from a statewide mandatory benefit to an optional, county-funded benefit. With mounting fiscal pressures, counties may have no choice but to reduce the scope of mobile crisis services or eliminate this benefit entirely.
Why it matters
The Medi-Cal Community-Based Mobile Crisis Intervention Service benefit provides coordinated and clinically appropriate behavioral health crisis support. In many communities, mobile crisis teams are essential local responses to homelessness, substance use conditions, and mental health crises. These teams focus on diverting individuals in crises from emergency departments, reducing law enforcement involvement, and connecting people to local resources and care.
The city of Eureka’s mobile crisis team is one example of what is at risk under the Governor’s proposal. Eureka is a small rural community of about 26,000 in Humboldt County. Crisis Alternative Response of Eureka (CARE) provides community-based, low-barrier access to mental health services, seven days a week. The team includes four mental health case managers, a mental health clinician, and an administrative technician.
The team responds to residents in crisis, collaborating with and independently of law enforcement, as the Eureka Police Department’s dispatch receives calls for service.
Since 2023, CARE has responded to 844 crises and diverted nearly 80% of them from the emergency department or involuntary detention. Thanks to a recent partnership with the county, the city expects to respond to over 700 crisis calls in the next year alone. A reduction in funding could reduce response capacity and effectively eliminate access to critical services in Eureka, even as demand for those services grows.
“Crises are going to happen whether or not mobile crisis teams are around to respond to them,” said Jacob Rosen, the CARE managing mental health clinician. “Cutting the mandate is the equivalent of cutting services, meaning the responsibility for responding to those crises will shift back to law enforcement. This is the wrong direction for the field of mobile crisis response.”