Community leaders across the province have written Premier Dalton McGuinty, saying mental health services for children and youth are in "real trouble."

Most of the 90 agencies that form the umbrella group Children's Mental Health Ontario have asked leaders in their communities to help push for improved funding of mental-health services for children, says Camille Quenneville, director of policy and communications for CMHO.

In Thunder Bay, for example, the police chief has written the premier, while in other communities school board directors or agency volunteers have taken the lead.

In Ottawa, volunteers on the boards of the Youth Services Bureau, the Roberts-Smart Centre and the Crossroads Children's Centre issued their open letter Wednesday, calling for funding to be tied to inflation.

"Our agencies don't need a huge infusion of cash," says the letter, signed by nine board members of the agencies. "But children's mental health needs to be stabilized before more agencies move to insolvency."

Underfunding youth mental health in Ottawa came to the forefront last year with the near-bankruptcy of the Roberts-Smart Centre, a residential and counselling centre.

Board member Patricia Day was one of the signatories to the open letter.

She says because Roberts-Smart operates a residential program, the chronic underfunding of services has had more severe repercussions for the agency than others.

"The same as household budgets have risen over eight to 10 years, so have our expenses, but the funding has been flat," says Day. "Other agencies can drop a program and manage a budget, which is what people have been forced to do, but in our case, we have to close a house. You lose a house and it's lost almost forever -- it's very, very hard to open another one."

Day says the Roberts-Smart Centre is awaiting a report on the agency's organizational structure and service delivery. The report, to be delivered Friday, was prepared by ministry officials at the request of the centre.

"Right now we are in the black and all the services are being provided," thanks to a short-term solution negotiated with the province, says Day. "What the board is doing is looking long-term so we can be sustainable -- we don't want to lurch from pothole to pothole."

Chris Warburton, chair of the board of the Youth Services Bureau, also signed the letter.

"The funding picture tells a story over time," says Warburton, former vice-president of Algonquin College. "Inflation from 1992 to 2009 rose 36 per cent, but the increase to core funding for children's mental health services was barely seven per cent."

As a result, says Warburton, the Youth Services Bureau last year closed a support group for parents and adolescents, one that had an 18-month waiting list.

The open letters are coming now because the province is preparing its next budget.

In response, Paris Meilleur, a spokesperson for the ministry of children and youth services, said there have been two increases in base funding for children's mental-health, in 2004 and 2007

"We absolutely know there's more to do," Meilleur said. "We have a remarkable sector doing great work and we are going to continue to find a pathway forward."

The agencies are asking for a long-term commitment to make sure their funding rises with inflation, but also for significant increases to expand services to deal with what Warburton calls "the backlog of unmet needs."

"My colleagues who work in the field sense the urgency every day -- there's a sense that for too many youth, there's nowhere to go," says Warburton.

While at Algonquin, Warburton says he saw the effects of early intervention for youths encountering mental health problems. "I saw a lot of people coming back and getting a second chance, becoming healthy and functional. The significant issue here is reaching out to young people who are at a critical juncture in their lives. To invest in them is a tremendous investment in our future."

Day says children's mental health is an orphan service, thanks in large part to the stigma attached to mental illness in general.

"We really want to bring this out in the open and say, 'Where is the fair funding for it?'" says Day. "Early intervention is the biggest recompense for your dollar, and as a citizen I'd much prefer having my money go here than to custodial care. There's money for jail and money for police and we need money for early intervention."