Tarrant commissioners to request state Legislature fund mental health facility in county
The Tarrant County Commissioners Court on Tuesday, Dec. 3, passed a resolution to request the state Legislature allocate funding to build a state mental health facility to serve county residents.
The court “strongly urges the State of Texas to fund the development of a state mental health facility in Tarrant County,” said County Judge Tim O’Hare, who read the resolution text aloud before it passed unanimously.
In the event that the state can or will not fund a new facility, the resolution asked lawmakers to “expand capacity at an existing state funded mental health facility with space designated specifically to serve the residents of Tarrant County, or partner with Tarrant County by providing funding to achieve a solution through a public-private partnership with a local hospital to provide services to Tarrant County residents in need of mental health care.”
Tarrant County is Texas’ third largest, and the largest county in the state without a state mental health facility within its borders, the resolution states.
The facility is also needed due to the high number of inmates in the county jail who require competency restoration, a process by which people experiencing mental health crises are returned to a state in which they comprehend their situation well enough to stand before a judge. An average of 331 county inmates are on the wait list for competency restoration at any given time, the resolution states.
A state mental health facility in Tarrant County would also fill a critical gap in the continuum of care for county residents and ease pressure on the county jail, the resolution states.
Before the vote, Precinct 1 Commissioner Roy Charles Brooks commended O’Hare for his leadership in getting the resolution passed and speaking with state lawmakers about it.
“It is my hope that your prayers and the prayers of all the rest of us will help get those prayers beyond the ceiling so the Legislature will hear them and act,” Brooks said.
Fort Worth resident Julie Griffin expressed her approval of the resolution, but asked the commissioners to put less focus on competency restoration and more on addressing peoples’ mental health situations before they become inmates.
“Mental health crises should be treated at the appropriate level of care before they become a forensic case load,” she said. “Competency restoration is important, but it is a small sliver of the overall population.”
O’Hare asked her to send his office her concerns so that he can pass them onto state lawmakers. He said he had already spoken in-depth with a legislator who he said supports the resolution. His office did not immediately return an email seeking the name of the legislator.
O’Hare announced his intent to present the resolution during a special called meeting on Nov. 12, at which Sheriff Bill Waybourn briefed the commissioners on a federal report on mental health services in the county jail.
