Sweetser is being proactive through both of our advocacy organizations and lobbyists: Maine Behavioral Health Community Collaborative and the Maine Alliance for Addiction and Mental Health Services. We are working to support legislation that enhances and builds on our success at Sweetser in addition to making clear the impact of legislation that would add a burden to behavioral health providers like us.
Our President & CEO Jayne Van Bramer and Chief Growth Officer Danielle Parent recently went to the state house in Augusta to testify on several key legislative priorities.
They testified in support of LD 181, a Resolve, Directing the Department of Health and Human Services to Implement Secure Children’s Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility Services.
Review all the testimony from the hearing here:
http://www.mainelegislature.org/legis/bills/display_ps.asp?ld=181&PID=1456&snum=131&sec3
We also wrote this Op-Ed in the Portland Press Herald on the need to bring Maine kids being served in out of state residential treatment facilities back home for the care they deserve and that Maine providers like us can offer with the support of state government.
We submitted testimony in support of Rep. Lori Gramlich’s bill LD 435: Resolve, to Ensure the Provision of Medically Necessary Behavioral Health Care Services for Children in Their Homes and Communities.
Review all the testimony from the hearing here: https://legislature.maine.gov/bills/display_ps.asp?PID=1456&snum=131&paper=HP0268#