A white tent towers over the grounds of the Uvalde County Fairplex. The venue, a sparse multi-purpose venue that previously hosted rodeos, quinceaneras and the annual Firefighters’ Ball, is now home to Texas’ newest trauma center and Governor Greg Abbott’s latest self-proclaimed success. It has become.
A sign with the message “Yvalde Strong” and the Uvalde High School Coyote logo hangs in the window of a building in downtown Uvalde, Texas, August 21, 2022.
Kat Calderwood/ABC News
The Uvalde Together Resiliency Center was established following the shooting at Robb Elementary School that killed 19 children and two adults. The Republican governor approved his $5 million for its construction the same week.
In the aftermath of the massacre, Abbott said that the mass shootings (one of 574 so far in the United States in 2022, and one of 42 in Texas alone) are a threat to the country (and his country). state)’s gun obsession, but rather the result of the country (and his state) not properly investing in mental health care.
“We as a state and as a society need to do a better job on mental health,” Abbott said at a press conference days after the shooting. Duration: We as a government need to find ways to do something to target that mental health issue.”
A woman cries and hugs a young girl outside the Willie De Leon Civic Center, where grief counseling is offered in Uvalde, Texas, May 24, 2022.
Allison Diner/AFP via Getty Images, File
Since then, Abbott, who is currently running for re-election, appears to have made access to mental health care a political priority.
In response to a question from ABC News, his office noted Yuvalde Resiliency as a “community service hub … run by the Yuvalde community.”they pointed out $105 million investment “To make schools safer and support the mental health of children, teachers, and families in Uvalde and across Texas.” claimed to have spent
The South Texas Office’s Children’s Belief Center is located in downtown Uvalde, Texas.
Kat Calderwood/ABC News
“During his tenure, Governor Abbott will work closely with the Texas legislature to pass $25 billion in various bills that address mental and behavioral health issues and expand access to mental health services. I’ve allocated more.”
‘Lack of cooperation’
However, local leaders and mental health care professionals told ABC News that Uvalde Resiliency’s work has been hampered by a lack of cooperation with existing agencies with established relationships in the community. And according to an ABC News review, only a fraction of the money advertised by the Governor’s Office actually funds state mental health care programs.
Experts say a patchwork mental health care system keeps millions of rural Texas residents out of medical care, and ‘makeshift’ funding is plaguing the Lone Star state problem is not resolved.
A sign at Robb Elementary School is seen covered in flowers and presents on June 17, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images, File
Shortly after the shooting, Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell-Busby applied for the state-funded Texas Crime Victims Assistance Grant Program and received $5 million to build and operate the Uvalde Together Resiliency Center.
Shortly thereafter, Abbott allocated $1.25 million to the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District to provide trauma-informed counseling to students, and $5 million to the Hill Country Center for Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities. At the time of the tragedy, there were only 13 staff members.
Taken together, the funding represented an unprecedented investment in access to mental health care for the Uvalde community, but Busby quickly realized that it would not be enough to address the complex challenges facing citizens. I found out.
“$5 million sounds like a lot of money,” Busby told ABC News. Planting roots in our community doesn’t go very far. ”
With the help of a variety of affiliated organizations, the Center provides the grieving town and its citizens with “psychological first aid, crisis counseling and training for survivors, first responders, and those in the community experiencing cost.” We have provided a range of services including Behavioral Health Services for trauma. ”
The center has so far provided more than 3,800 contacts in the community, with more than 1,900 clinical visits serving more than 700 people, according to Mary Beth Fisk, Interim Executive Director of the Resiliency Center. .
Governor Greg Abbott speaks with sheriffs at a rally for victims of the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, May 25, 2022.
Bloomberg, File via Getty Images
Fisk told ABC News:
But Fisk declined to answer questions about whether those figures included existing clients of the Resiliency Center’s private practice partners. told me not to seek care at the center.
“It’s run by our state government. They couldn’t give it away.” And it’s been that way since day one.”
Local practitioners say they have received negative feedback from community members regarding the quality of care, the treatment environment, and long wait times at the centre. All of this is compounded by cultural taboos that condemn mental health care and poor insurance coverage in the largely Latinx community.
Jacqueline Gonzalez, a licensed professional counselor who has practiced at Uvalde since 2015, told ABC News that the center’s leaders will seek advice and cooperation from local providers in Uvalde’s established mental health care network. said he couldn’t.
“I think the hardest part for me was that they didn’t allow me to help,” Gonzalez told ABC News. “Day one, they’re like, ‘We’ve got it covered. We don’t need anyone.'”
Alejandra Castro, director of rural services for the Family Services Association, a Texas-based human services organization that has been helping communities for 22 years, said she was turned away by the center’s leaders as well.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaks at the “Get Out The Vote” rally in Katy, Texas, October 27, 2022.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
“Being here in the community allows outsiders to work with us and say, ‘How can we best support the community you’re in like it’s been in the last 20 years?’ ABC News: “Unfortunately, it was the exact opposite of that.”
When asked about the grievances some members of the Uvalde community expressed about their access to various resources, Fisk defended the work of the Resiliency Center, arguing that the center was built on its predecessor to provide mental and behavioral health. He emphasized how quickly he took over the role of a family support center. It acts not only as a service but also as a lender to victims and survivors seeking financial assistance.
“We feel privileged to be able to bring together a collective resource with other community partners who want to work with us,” Fisk said. “We all have a common goal: to tread along this healing journey at a time when many in this community find themselves in a place of true despair right now.”
Fisk did not respond to requests for follow-up interviews regarding work at the Resiliency Center.
At the state level, experts described a similar situation regarding access to mental health care.
Millions of dollars spent after the Uvalde massacre
Abbott’s oft-cited $105.5 million outlay for the mass shooting included $5.8 million to fund access to health for children through telemedicine in Texas, and $4.7 million to the Health and Human Services Commissioner. Coordinating the Specialty Care Directive, widely praised by health care professionals, to include $950,000 for HHSC expansion to include multisystem therapies statewide.
However, this represents $210 million over the past two years to HHSC, which oversees the state’s mental health services, to fund Operation Lone Star, a border security initiative that launched in March 2021. after the reduction of
“Mental health practitioners have seen positive improvements over the last few years,” Ballware said. “But our state was already in the red, so we need more money to catch up.”
A closer look at the breakdown of the governor’s announced budget shows that only $16.5 million of the $105.5 million (roughly 15% of the total advertised by the Abbott administration) went to expanding mental health resources statewide; Of that, 85% was allocated for police training, staff travel and classroom security upgrades, including $50 million in bulletproof shields.
At the only Texas governor’s debate in September, Abbott laid out a bewildering figure of $25 billion in spending on mental health care in the wake of the Uvalde shooting.
Some experts, Alison Moll Boulware, policy director of the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, a research and funding agency at the University of Texas at Austin, have no idea how the governor got to such numbers. told ABC News.
“That’s something I’ve never heard before,” Ballware said of the governor’s treasurer.
The governor’s office did not respond to ABC News’ request for information about this allegation.
The most likely source of this figure is the $25 billion Medicaid expansion grant of 2017, $15 billion of which was federal funding from the Department of Health and Human Services, established by the Obama administration and led by Governor Abbott. It is a program that was actively opposed by
However, while the funds, known as the Texas Health Care Transformation and Quality Improvement Program, were used to expand Medicaid statewide under the 1115 Medicaid Waiver Authority, 5 of Texas psychiatrists Given that only 1 person in a person receives Medicaid, it cannot be accurately described as funding mental health services.
Boleware says that even with adequate funding, not all problems can be solved with increased spending.
“There is a big difference between spending on mental health and accessing mental health. It does not mean that they are the same in both.”
Systemic issues that plague access to mental health care include growing labor shortages and persistent cultural stigma surrounding mental health care.
Dr. Andy Keller, a licensed psychologist who participates in the Texas Children’s Mental Health Care Consortium and is president and chief executive officer of the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, said Uvalde had rushed to shoot a “pause.” In response, we called out the governor’s statewide spending plan.”
“This is a very complicated issue,” said Keller.
