Tuesday, November 04, 2025

Author: Thomas P. Royer, Beech Brook President/CEO

At Beech Brook, we work with children and families striving to build stability amid poverty, trauma, violence, and mental health challenges. For these families, stability starts with the basics — food and healthcare. Without them, nothing else works.

Two vital supports — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies — now hang in the balance. SNAP helps families afford groceries; ACA subsidies make healthcare coverage possible for working parents. Both are lifelines. And both are at risk, even as families face the uncertainty of a government shutdown.

Food Stamps are a Bridge to Stability

SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, helps more than 40 million Americans — including roughly 190,000 people in Cuyahoga County — put food on the table. It’s not a handout; it’s a bridge to stability, providing about $6 per person per day. Those dollars circulate through local stores and farmers markets, supporting small businesses while keeping children nourished.

But SNAP’s impact extends far beyond the dinner table. Hunger affects a child’s ability to learn, regulate emotions, and build resilience. In our classrooms and counseling rooms, it appears as irritability, inattention, and hopelessness. For the children Beech Brook serves, who are already coping with trauma, hunger magnifies every struggle. When families lose SNAP, parents skip meals, tensions rise, and progress in therapy unravels overnight.

Lack of Healthcare leaves Trauma and Illnesses Untreated

At the same time, ACA premium subsidies — which have made healthcare affordable for millions — are set to expire in January. Without them, many working families will face hundreds of dollars in new monthly costs. For our families, that means an impossible choice: pay for food or pay for healthcare. Either loss harms children.

How Beech Brook is Helping...

At Beech Brook, we understand that mental health and basic needs are inseparable. That’s why we created the Beech Brook Family Center, which includes our Family Needs Store — a charitable-care resource where families can receive food, diapers, hygiene products, clothing, and household essentials at no cost. It helps families stretch budgets, preserves dignity, and connects them to mental health and parenting support under one roof.

...And Why We Need Public Supports

But local compassion can’t replace national commitment. If SNAP or ACA supports disappear, no charity can fill the gap. Programs that feed and heal children should never be used as political bargaining chips.

These aren’t abstract policy debates — they’re real lives: a 7-year-old too hungry to focus in school, a mother skipping her medication so her child can breathe easier, a teen dropping therapy after losing insurance.

For more than 170 years, Beech Brook’s mission has been to help children and families build hope, healing, and resilience. But no amount of therapy can replace food or healthcare. When those are stripped away, mental health declines, families destabilize, and poverty deepens.

As a community, we must decide who we are. Do we allow children to go hungry or lose care? Or do we affirm that no child should ever have to choose between food and health?

Beech Brook knows where we stand. We urge our leaders: protect SNAP, renew ACA subsidies, and safeguard the wellbeing of every family who depends on these vital programs.

We’ll keep doing our part — feeding, healing, and supporting our neighbors — but compassion on this scale requires all of us. It’s not partisan - it’s moral. The wellbeing of our children depends on it.

If you believe every child deserves food and healthcare, please contact your elected representatives and urge them to protect SNAP and ACA subsidies. Our families — and our future — depend on it.