Austin is one step closer to opening the first ever trauma recovery center in Texas – a resource that can be key to reducing violent crime and supporting victims of violent crime that has been sought by community advocates for two years.
TRCs offer a place for victims of violent crime to receive recovery support – like clinical case management, psychotherapy, and legal advocacy – in a venue that is not directly connected to actors within the justice system. For victims of crime who fear the justice system, tying recovery to it can sometimes deter people from seeking such support. The quest to open a TRC in Austin gathered steam three years ago as uprisings against police violence spread throughout the United States. The provocative political debate over “defunding the police” that followed those protests largely obscured the broader goal of community groups and elected leaders engaged in that work – invest less of the city budget in policing so that more money could be invested in alternative methods of reducing crime.
When City Council voted in 2020 to reallocate funding from the Austin Police Department into other programs that could address the root causes of violent crime – poverty, lack of mental health care, insufficient support for people involved in violent relationships – that was their intended goal. The Reimagining Public Safety Task Force, established to generate policy ideas aimed at achieving that goal, recommended a slew of priorities – one of which was the opening of a trauma recovery center.
The following year, when Council adopted a fiscal year 2021-2022 budget, which fully restored funding cut from APD in FY 2020-21, they also approved $1 million to fund a TRC. At their July 20 meeting, City Council took another step toward that goal by authorizing staff to negotiate and execute a 24-month contract with African American Youth Harvest Foundation to “provide [TRC] services to survivors of violent crime and their families from underserved populations.”
When the contract with AAYHF is signed Sept. 1, the nonprofit and Austin Public Health’s Office of Violence Prevention will collaborate with the National Alliance of Trauma Recovery Centers on TRC operations such as service delivery, data tracking, and staffing. Previously, the OVP contracted with Dr. Chico Tillmon, a research fellow at the University of Chicago’s Crime and Education Labs, to study community violence in Austin and develop programs aimed at reducing it. The TRC will be located in Northeast Austin along U.S. Hwy. 290 near I-35; the city decided to locate the center there based on Tillmon’s research and hospital data.
This article appears in July 28 • 2023.