As policymakers and parents look for ways to help Texas kids with mental health challenges, it’s important to remember that the solutions will look different for each child and family. The right mix for a particular child could include more exercise, limits on screen time, stable housing, therapy or other changes in their lives. However, the critical population of kids with the most complex mental health challenges will need more intensive services.
In 2023, the Texas Legislature took a key step to figure out how to support these kids with acute challenges and ensure that parents desperately seeking help can find the services they need. During that session, lawmakers directed the Statewide Behavioral Health Coordinating Council to develop a strategic plan to guide the state’s work on mental health and substance use challenges among Texas kids.
The council released the Strategic Plan a few weeks before the Legislature convened for its 2025 session — providing a road map for state leaders to help parents support their children through these challenges.
Legislators had to move quickly to react to the recommendations in the new Strategic Plan. How did they do?
That’s the question we tackled in our recent report. We compared the recommendations in the Strategic Plan to steps the Legislature took last year.
Our analysis shows that lawmakers made meaningful progress in 2025. Sen. Lois Kolkhorst and Sen. Royce West, Rep. Brooks Langraff and Rep. Ann Johnson, as well as other legislators, came together to build on the Legislature’s history of bipartisan cooperation on mental health. They provided funding for new mobile youth crisis outreach teams, improved access to Multisystemic Therapy, expanded the workforce through the Texas Child Mental Health Care Consortium (TCMHCC), and moved the ball forward in other ways.
At the end of the day, the Legislature fully or partially implemented eight of the 31 recommendations in the state’s Strategic Plan for children’s mental health. We appreciate those steps forward.
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However, there is clearly more work to do to implement the recommendations in this action plan. Too many Texas parents are desperately looking for services to help their children get healthy, go to school, and sleep in their own beds instead of entering a psychiatric hospital.
Our report highlights several recommendations in the Strategic Plan that legislators should embrace next session, including scaling up crisis services, strengthening the mental health workforce in rural communities, and improving access to Youth Empowerment Services (YES) Waiver services.
In particular, legislators should make sure that YES Waiver services are available to more children who need them. The YES Waiver funds a wraparound team to support children whose mental health needs put them at risk of entering a psychiatric hospital, foster care or other treatment facilities that require them to live away from home. These supports — such as caregiver respite, therapy for the child and connections to specialized treatments — help children stay with their families while they are getting healthy.
In other words, the YES Waiver reserves psychiatric hospitals — and the most expensive services — for the children with the most dire needs. Most importantly, as children recover, the YES Waiver allows them to keep attending school, eating dinner with their family and sleeping in their own bed.
Unfortunately, the number of Texas children served in the program is falling — even as demand rises. Nearly 900 children were left waiting for these services in 2023. The Strategic Plan called for opening the door to more of those kids, but the Legislature failed to take any steps to meet the rising demand.
As legislators start to prepare for the 2027 session, we are hopeful they will take the next steps to support children’s mental health — including improving access to YES Waiver services.
Muna Javaid is the senior policy associate for child protection at Texans Care for Children.
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