In her op-ed, published yesterday, Toby expressed her support for a new bill that would allow Licensed Creative Arts Therapists to bill Medicaid, greatly widening access to mental health care in NYC and across the state.
“As Director of the Music Therapy program at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music (BKCM), which currently serves 2,500 clients across 47 outreach sites around New York City, I join the practitioners in my field throughout the state who have been urging Governor Hochul to sign this promising legislation,” Toby writes.
“Through my work as a Licensed Creative Arts Therapist (LCAT), I have witnessed extraordinary transformations and moments of profound healing and social connection: a child with selective mutism who was able to express themself through singing and writing songs; seniors in residential memory care who reclaimed periods of lucidity when making music as a group; and young people in the city’s shelter system who processed their displacement through beat-making and freestyling.”