When Helen and I set out to build Little Otter, our mission was to transform how children and families receive mental health care. Over the past five years, we’ve grown and delivered a product that is personalized, tech-driven, clinically rigorous, and accessible.
We have improved access to quality care through our insurance partnerships. We’ve empowered parents with knowledge about their children and their family's mental health - over 100k families have taken our Family Mental Health Check-up. We’ve pioneered a whole-family approach, providing a singular care location for both parents and children. Most importantly, we've demonstrated that you don’t need to sacrifice quality at scale, bringing life-changing outcomes to tens of thousands of children and families.
But we are just getting started. That’s why I’m excited to share the next step in our journey. Little Otter has merged with Hazel Health to accelerate our mission to transform the lives of millions of families.
The Journey Here
We’ve known the Hazel team well for many years. We’ve always thought of Hazel Health as a sister company, a team with the same mission and values, tackling the same challenges from a different angle, Little Otter from the home, and Hazel from the school.
While both of us have been building impactful companies, the demand for children’s mental healthcare has never been greater. We continue to ask too much from parents and families, forcing them to navigate multiple systems, referrals, waitlists, and entry points to get access to care they desperately need.
I’ve long held the view that the fragmentation of services that we see across healthcare, and behavioral health in particular, is both bad for patients and company growth. Our communities need integrated solutions for care delivery - ones that understand the totality of needs, and can flex to provide services across the behavioral health continuum of care. And when I began talking with the Hazel team earlier this year, it became clear that together we had immense power to impact this problem. Hazel is the market leader in school-based care, with a deep wealth of experience serving children through their partnership with K-12 public schools. 70% of all mental health visits for kids in the US are delivered in schools. Bridging schools and homes is not only an academic imperative, it’s essential for high quality healthcare as well. By joining forces, Little Otter and Hazel can break down these barriers to care and reduce frustrating silos for families, health plans, schools, and clinicians.
Today, Hazel + Little Otter reach over 20 million children and families across 6,200 schools in 20 states.
Combining Hazel’s school-based expertise with Little Otter’s family-centered care allows us to reach more children and parents, coordinate care more effectively, and deliver evidence-based care with outcomes that truly matter. This merger allows us to build a system that supports children and families across every environment where they learn, live, and grow — home, school, and beyond. Bringing our companies together for the collective good of our communities and partners - and setting down individuality that often dominates company building - is one of my proudest moments as a leader.
What’s Next?
With our combined resources and expertise, Little Otter and Hazel Health can take our shared mission even further. We will continue to deliver exceptional care while building technology products that reduce silos and ensure children and families have access to the right support at the right time.
What does this mean for families and partners? In the short term, the experience remains the same. Families will continue to work with trusted clinicians. All of our health insurance partnerships will remain in place - and if anything be strengthened - by this merger. Behind the scenes, however, we’ll be able to:
- Expand provider capacity, ensuring timely access while maintaining high-quality, measurement-based care.
- Strengthen coordination between schools, families, pediatricians, health plans, and clinicians to deliver seamless support.
- Accelerate R&D and technology development to make care more personalized, responsive, and connected.
- Expand access through Medicaid and uninsured populations, supporting equity and reaching families who are historically underserved.
- Extend both the services Hazel provides - adding capabilities such as psychiatry and specialty mental health programs - and the populations we care for, providing direct care to the important adults in children’s lives - their parents, caregivers, school staff, teachers, and more.
Thank you
I want to express my deep gratitude and appreciation for everyone who has been part of the Little Otter journey to date.
To our patients, current, past, and future - thank you for trusting us to take care of your families. You are the reason we do this work.
To our partners, thank you for your commitment to serve families, this merger strengthens our ability to serve you and your families.
To our investors - thank you for believing in us and understanding that families matter. Thank you for understanding that trust and quality are a wedge.
To the Otters, past and present - thank you for re-imagining what mental healthcare could be for families and for delivering amazing care to so many families.
And to our new Hazel teammates - thank you for welcoming us with open arms.
And to all of Hazel’s partners, school leaders, and teachers, we know that when students’ mental health needs are met, attendance rises, focus improves, and educators can do what they do best: teach and reach students. We are committed to strengthening partnerships with districts and state agencies by co-designing services that reflect your communities, staffing realities, and goals for student success. Together, we can reach students who might otherwise fall through the cracks, especially in rural, low-income, and historically under-resourced communities.
This is the start of something much bigger. Our dream is to make high-quality mental health care feel less like a privilege and more like a right. This merger accelerates us towards this dream. I'm excited to share more about what comes next over the coming months.
Rebecca
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