Kansas Health Institute | Information For Policy Makers. Health for Kansans.

TOPEKA — Recent cuts to community mental health center budgets are harming veterans and their families, a center director said Tuesday.

“When community mental centers are not funded at appropriate levels, there are people who fall through the cracks,” said Robin Cole, who runs Pawnee Mental Health Services, a Manhattan-based center that serves a 10-county area that includes Fort Riley. “These people include veterans and their families."

Cole testified before the House Committee on Veterans, Military and Homeland Security. She said that former servicemen and women also have access to mental health services through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, but their family members may not and often are uninsured.

State-funded grants that help mental health centers offset the costs of caring for the uninsured have been cut from $31 million in 2007 to $10.8 million in 2012.

Cole and Sheli Sweeney of the Kansas Association of Community Mental Health Centers asked legislators to restore part or all of the grant money.

“That $10.8 million pool is what we use to serve people who walk in our doors uninsured,” Sweeney said. “Many times, these are young soldiers and their families.”

Sweeney said the Department of Veterans Affairs provides mental health services in Topeka, Wichita and Leavenworth.

But “in many parts of the state – western Kansas, for example – these services are not available,” she said. “The VA can’t be everywhere, but we (the mental health centers) are. We have 100 office locations across the state.”

The committee members agreed to support doing more to make veterans aware of the mental health services in their communities. But they did not recommend additional funding for the mental health centers. Chairman Mario Goico, a Wichita Republican, said that recommendation would need to come from the House Ways and Means Committee.