One Big Beautiful Bill forces mental health cuts in Bristol County

Lauri-Ann Nogler has now been waiting a month to receive mental health services. 

The unemployed 56-year-old had come to depend on the assistance of Community Counseling of Bristol County (CCBC) and its Community Partners program, which helped her coordinate a maze of paperwork and overcome transportation obstacles to get care. 

But the Community Partners program was eliminated in July. Andrew Dawley, president and CEO of CCBC, said he was forced to lay off approximately 40 to 45 employees after federal Medicaid cuts significantly reduced MassHealth’s budget for care management programs.  

Community Partners assisted in outreach to providers, helped find options for counseling, connected patients to health and wellness care, and provided other services like housing and transportation support. Working directly with providers, Community Partners worked to locate individuals with need, engage them in a treatment plan, and provide them with necessary services. 

Dawley described the Community Partners program as the “connective tissue” between care organizations and individuals in need of services. Now, without these connections, Dawley raised concerns about higher admissions to inpatient units, boarding in emergency departments, and higher rates of housing and food insecurity.

“You’re cutting the legs out from these organizations that are really trying to do the right thing and the right work,” said Alex Weiner, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, founder of New Bedford Psychiatry & Wellness, and member of the New Bedford Board of Health. 

Weiner, who has experience working for community counseling centers, stressed the importance of locally accessible care. 

“This story is much larger than just people being laid off,” Weiner said. “It’s disrupting this ecosystem that is already really fragile.”

Since President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law in July 2025, the state of Massachusetts has predicted losses of $3.5 billion in annual healthcare funding. Additionally, the law calls for different work requirements and more frequent renewals. MassHealth predicts these changes in operations will cost approximately $30 million annually. 

As part of the cuts, MassHealth coordination care service funding was cut by 50% in 2026. Local providers are no longer able to support Community Counseling of Bristol County as a community partner — that’s why the Community Partners program was discontinued, Dawley said. 

Stacey Nee, MassHealth director of communications, emailed a statement to The Light: “President Trump and Congress made disastrous cuts to Medicaid here in Massachusetts and across the country. We are beginning to see the real-life impact of those cuts at the state level. MassHealth is doing everything we can to protect our members and the essential care they rely on for their health and wellbeing. Our changes to care management programs are a targeted approach to control costs, bring us in line with other states, and protect access to care as much as possible.”

Facing new obstacles to receiving care, Nogler, the patient waiting for services, stressed the importance of the role of CCBC. 

“They were close with their clients, and that’s what I liked because I trusted them. Their services get five stars, they do good,” Nogler said. 

The effects of federal cuts felt locally

Community Partners did much more than coordinate appointments and help with paperwork – it alleviated some of the bureaucratic burden on individuals struggling with mental and physical challenges. 

“A lot of our members get intimidated by reading the medical letters from MassHealth … so a lot of them would just send pictures or emails to their care coordinator … and say, ‘What does this mean? What are my next steps?,’” said Sominishia Wright, a supervisor for CCBC who had previously worked as a community partner. 

Wright now works in the Community Support Program, a similar program that takes on smaller case loads and provides more intensive, frequent involvement with case management. Oftentimes, the Support program and Community Partners program would work closely together, especially with assisting clients in scheduling and following up with medical appointments. 

“It can be really overwhelming to be in the hospital and then you’re discharged with this big packet of stuff to do,” Wright said. “So care coordinators are the perfect people to help them follow up and make sure that they do attend their follow-up appointment or schedule with their specialist.”

Despite the similarity of the two programs the eligibility requirements are different. In the Community Partners program, providers identified individuals who may need the extra support, and then connected them with Community Counseling of Bristol County. The Support program, on the other hand, requires a referral from a medical provider — usually because the individual is facing substance abuse or has a mental health diagnosis. 

Wright said that it has been overwhelming since the discontinuing of the Community Partners program. She described the increase in referrals of clients hoping to transfer to the Support program, but said it’s difficult because they are not all eligible. 

“It’s a little disheartening to … have a possibility that [our patients] might not end up going to that appointment or their anxiety will get the best of them and they can’t complete that Social Security application,” Wright said. 

Dawley, the CEO, approximates that between 4,000 and 5,000 individuals will be affected by the loss of this program, based on their most recent data. He said the age group most affected would be adults 30 to 60 years old. 

Behavioral and mental health care can be challenging to navigate, sometimes leaving individuals to rely on emergency services when experiencing a mental health crisis. Four of the top 10 diagnoses among patients in long-term hospital stays (more than 30 days) are for behavioral conditions, according to a 2023 study by Massachusetts Health Policy Commission. 

“There’d been a real big push in the state to try to decrease the boarding at emergency rooms, and we felt like we were part of the solution for that,” Dawley said. 

Last month, about 5% of all emergency department visits were related to mental health concerns, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC estimates there are approximately 155 million emergency department visits per year across the United States. 

Other layoffs and cuts are happening across Massachusetts and nationally. Community Healthlink, based in Worcester, and Innovative Care Partners, based in Springfield, submitted notices of impending layoffs with the same dates as Community Counseling of Bristol County.

All 20 community partner programs in Massachusetts are slated to lose funding as a result of federal funding cuts to Medicaid, according to reporting from GBH.

The Bristol County nonprofit has served individuals across southeastern Massachusetts struggling with behavioral and mental health since 1988 — though its roots in the community go back to another organization that began in Seekonk in 1970. 

Now, the nonprofit is working to serve its Community Partners clients through other opportunities. 

“We were just really proud of this program,” Dawley said. “It really stings to lose it … but we hold our heads high and we’re really proud. We’re really worried about the people that are losing this service and we’ll try to find other ways to support them.”

Samantha McCarthy is a summer intern with the New Bedford Light, as part of the South Coast Internship designed for local students. Email Samantha at smccarthy@newbedfordlight.org