After facing sudden closure this winter, the Pocasset Mental Health Center could soon open up to more patients.
An amendment in the state budget from Falmouth Representative David Viera proposes $50,000 to convert office space at the 16 bed facility into two additional beds.
The rooms are currently used as office space and would need to be furnished and converted into safer spaces.
In February, Gov. Maura Healey proposed cutting mental health case workers and shuttering the Center for underuse. She later paused those plans after being met with local fierce opposition.
“It became the number one priority for me in this budget," Vieira said. "We also were able to get the funding back for the case managers. So we fully funded all of the case managers for fiscal year 2026 in the House version of the budget, where the governor had proposed a 50% reduction of case managers.”
Vieira said he initially hoped to bring the Pocasset Mental Health Center $200,000, adding eight additional beds, but the Ways and Means committee wasn’t ready to go that far.
“So now we're working with the Senate and Senator [Dylan] Fernandes, who's been working with us all along. We had some community forums. We've made site visits. And so we'll continue to work on preserving the existing funding and see if we can go even further in the Senate budget. “
Ultimately, Vieira said, the region needs more mental health services in the region, not less.
“My office consistently gets calls from family members where a loved one is being boarded in a hospital emergency room while they're looking for a mental health bed to make a transfer,” he said. “There's always folks being transferred off-Cape because the 16 beds are consistently full at Pocasset.”
