The priority in the months following the floods last summer that devastated the Hill Country was to rebuild broken communities.
Austin Dickson, Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country CEO, said the nonprofit began immediately supporting local communities with groceries, gas and cleaning. Funding was also directed to homes, a senior center, small businesses and school district property that saw major damage from the July 4 flooding.
“These are things that are core in any community that need to be rebuilt over time,” Dickson said.
In October, the community foundation’s priorities shifted. Hill Country mental health leaders alerted the foundation of the flood’s ripple effects statewide. The majority of the more than 130 lives lost that day were not local — and the grief, trauma and mental strain from the disaster would linger if not addressed.
about:blankTo proactively address the mental health ramifications of the floods, the foundation awarded two-year grants to eight grief and counseling centers statewide, including The WARM Place. The Fort Worth-based child bereavement center received $200,000 to continue providing no-cost services to children and families traumatized from last summer’s disaster.
“We are uniquely positioned with these flood recovery donations that we receive from all over the country and the world, and we have a problem that needs solving and money can be used to help aid in that,” Dickson said.
The grants, which were awarded in October, came at a pivotal time, said Shelley Bettis, executive director of The WARM Place.
“Children’s grief is such a critical issue and, unfortunately, tragic events like this bring it to light,” Bettis said.
Milestones, like the upcoming one-year anniversary of the tragedy, see heightened requests for the center’s services, including grief support groups, training and education for schools and other institutions, and an open phone line for anyone needing help.
“There’s all this fear because it hasn’t even been a year,” said Dana Minor, program director of The WARM Place. “How do we talk to our kids? How do we help them? How do we know they’re supported?”
The foundation has given over $64 million in grants to support rebuilding and repairing communities. The funding has come from the tens of millions of dollars donated to the foundation worldwide — including $2.5 million from Tarrant County donors.
Out of the three categories of support the community foundation is trying to provide — housing, mental health and community — mental health is the only one really needed by Texans outside of the Hill Country region, Dickson said.
The community foundation looked for grief centers in Texas that had records of excellence and provided low- to no-cost services for the grants, Dickson said.
Nonprofits can use the grants for necessary services to support community members affected by the floods, Dickson said. For example, the Midland-based Centers for Families and Children will purchase billboards promoting suicide awareness.
The WARM Place, the oldest child bereavement facility in the state, will use the money for general programming funds, Bettis said.
“They recognized that so many people were indirectly affected by the floods, and wanted to make sure that the support that we provide continues for all of those families for years to come,” Bettis said of the community foundation.
For Dickson, the goal isn’t necessarily long-term grant support for these organizations past 2027. Proper intervention for a child suffering from grief can lead to healthy adaptation for the child, according to the National Institutes of Health.
But in the short-term, the foundation is looking to ensure the wide-ranging emotional ramifications from the disaster are properly addressed, Dickson said.
“If our community alone is seeing this huge increase in post-traumatic stress disorder among children and adults, imagine all the people that were also traumatized that day that live all over the state and the country, frankly,” he said. “These grants are our very small attempt to address some of that.”
Leave a Reply