On July 29, 2024, Governor Healey signed the $57.78 billion state budget for Fiscal Year 2025. Thank you to all of our Members for your advocacy and support through this budget process!
The Healey-Driscoll administration is proud to assert that this budget makes Massachusetts a more affordable, equitable, and competitive place to live, work, and grow a business. The Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) appreciates that this budget makes significant investments to maintain our provider workforce, build on progress made in prior fiscal years, and invest in targeted service expansions.
EOHHS highlighted the following investments in children and family services:
- A record investment of $390M to fund Chapter 257 rate updates
- Annualizing provider rate increases and projected caseload for Department of Children and Families (DCF), Department of Mental Health (DMH), and Department of Disability Services (DDS)
- Support for the largest Turning 22 class in DDS’s history and the new FY24 class
- Increased foster care rates and doubled DCF’s annual birthday and holiday payments, as filed in H.2
- Continued support for allowing children in DCF custody to accrue savings in ABLE accounts
- Funding for the new 988 crisis lifeline and suicide prevention program at DPH on the operating budget for the first time.
- Providing free access to over-the-counter birth control and prenatal vitamins for MassHealth members
- Eliminating co-pays or premiums for low-income kids on the Children’s Medical Security Plan for kids who aren’t eligible for MassHealth Standard
- Continuing MassHealth investments begun in FY23 and FY24, such as the creation of 26 Community Behavioral Health Centers
Coalition Partners helped secure key elements, such as:
- Lift Our Kids
- 10 percent benefit increase to Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children ($496M) and Emergency Aid to the Elderly Disabled and Children ($183M)
- Common Start
- $1.52 billion for early education and care, including expanded access to affordable child care for families, support for early educators, and increased provider reimbursement rates
- Permanency for the state's C3 operational grant program program for child care providers
- and more
Investments That Didn’t Make the Cut:
The final budget cut $317 million from what the legislature had allocated due to revenue projections continuing to be reserved going into 2025, a desire to avoid any possible future mid-year budget cuts, and anticipated reversions, such as related to reduced caseloads and delays in standing up programming in certain circumstances. A $4.7M veto for DCF funding reflects a downtick in foster care caseloads through the fiscal year without any expected impacts on programming. Similarly, a relatively small $1M cut to the DYS line item is due to delayed programming. As a result, EOHHS asserts the Governor's vetoes won't hurt the core of human services.
Click here to find more information and details about the FY25 budget.