{"id":946928,"date":"2026-05-08T21:39:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T21:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/946928\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T21:39:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T21:39:15","slug":"lewiston-mental-health-agency-merges-with-sweetser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/946928\/","title":{"rendered":"Lewiston mental health agency merges with Sweetser"},"content":{"rendered":"

Common Ties Mental Health Services of Lewiston is merging with statewide mental health provider Sweetser to overcome financial struggles that leaders say are becoming common at smaller healthcare agencies.<\/p>\n

Common Ties<\/a> has provided case management and housing services to 300 clients in Lewiston. But Karen Bate, executive director, said the organization has been struggling to keep up with rising health insurance and utility costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt became more of a challenge to balance providing a good, solid benefit package to the staff when not really seeing a lot of return financially on the other end,\u201d Bate said. \u201cIt\u2019s very difficult to find good quality staff that have the credentialing that\u2019s required by the state to work in this field, and so we needed to make sure we could stand out amongst the rest of the agencies in our community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bate started looking for a way out. She found it in Sweetser, which last month moved over 300 clients and more than a dozen employees from Common Ties. They now work out of Sweetser\u2019s Hope & Healing Center<\/a>, which provides behavioral health services at 18 Mollison Way in Lewiston.<\/p>\n

Jayne Van Bramer, president and CEO of Sweetser, said most Common Ties clients can stay with their case managers without any disruptions to care.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd they\u2019ll now have the advantage of having access to a whole full continuum of behavioral health services,\u201d Van Bramer said. \u201cSo whether it\u2019s medication management or therapy or employment support or peer support, they\u2019ll have access to a full continuum of care to really help them recover and be well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sweetser sees 12,000 patients across Maine for case management, child and adult residential programs, experiential learning, mobile crisis services and peer support. The merger makes it the state\u2019s largest Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic, a behavioral health designation with its own reimbursement model.<\/p>\n

With the added staff, Lewiston\u2019s Hope & Healing Center can see more than 1,000 patients. But Van Bramer said the real benefit to being a larger organization is that essential programs that are less profitable can be sustained by other programs and varying reimbursement rate structures.<\/p>\n

Common Ties didn\u2019t have that luxury. The agency\u2019s electronic health record vendor was set to shutter in June, and Bate was not sure how they would afford a pricey alternate. At the same time, the costs of energy, gas and rent were rising.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was getting tighter and tighter to balance our budget,\u201d Bate said. <\/p>\n

Common Ties runs a program that offers housing subsidies to clients, a third of whom are unhoused. Some housing services remain at Common Ties\u2019 building at 12 Bates St., but leaders of both organizations say the goal is to eventually be under one roof.<\/p>\n

Sweetser employs almost 600 people across the state. Van Bramer said Common Ties clients moving to Sweetser will still get the attentive, supportive environment of a smaller organization \u2014 with the resources, staffing and programs of a larger organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really does strengthen our ability to provide services in that high-need community,\u201d Van Bramer said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Common Ties Mental Health Services of Lewiston is merging with statewide mental health provider Sweetser to overcome financial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":946929,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[105,218,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-946928","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116541128208095157","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=946928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/946929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=946928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=946928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=946928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}