The Uvalde Together Resiliency Center was created in response to the shooting at Robb Elementary School, which left 19 children and two adults dead. The Republican governor authorized $5 million for its construction the same week, the symbolic centerpiece of his administration's response to longstanding mental health care failings locally and statewide.
In response to questions from ABC News, his office pointed to Uvalde Resiliency as"a hub for community services … being run by the Uvalde community." They pointed to a $105 million investment"to make schools safer and support the mental health of children, teachers, and families in Uvalde and across Texas." And they claimed that his administration spent billions on mental health care services during his governorship.
Soon after, Abbott also 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 Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Center, an existing mental health care facility in the Uvalde area that, at the time of the tragedy, had a staff of just 13 people.
According to the Resiliency Center's interim executive director Mary Beth Fisk, the center has so far provided over 3,800 contacts in the community, with over 1,900 clinical visits serving more than 700 individuals. Local practitioners say they have received negative feedback from community members regarding the quality of care, the therapeutic environment, and the long wait times at the center, all exacerbated by cultural taboos stigmatizing mental health care and poor insurance coverage in the largely Latino community.
"I had hoped that being here in the community, the outsiders would want to partner with us and say, 'How can we best support the community that you have been in, like your community for the last 20 something years?'" Castro told ABC News."And it was the total opposite of that, unfortunately." "Mental health stakeholders have seen positive improvement over the past few years," Boleware said."But we were already at such a deficit in our state that a lot more is needed to catch up."
The most likely source for this figure is a $25 billion Medicaid expansion grant in 2017—$15 billion of which was federal funding from the Department of Health and Human Services—a program established by the Obama administration and which Gov. Abbott actively fought against.
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