About

• Our History
• Staff
• Board of Directors

Texas Council of Community Centers represents the 39 public Community Centers throughout Texas providing services and support for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, serious mental illness, and substance addictions.

We facilitate policies and funding decisions that support the public mission of the Centers.

The functions of Texas Council are governed by a Board of Directors that is comprised of one delegate from the local board of trustees of each member Center and carried out by an Executive Director appointed by the board. In collaboration with its members through leadership and staff consortia, committees, and workgroups, the Texas Council accomplishes the following on behalf of Centers:

• Promote the purpose and vision of Centers
• Initiate and seek adoption of regulatory policy with state agencies and statutory recommendations to the Texas Legislature that will enhance and improve community services
• Provide critical issue identification and analysis to member Centers
• Build consensus among member Centers on solutions to issues and challenges
• Provide educational opportunities on board roles and responsibilities to assist Center trustees and opportunities for trustees to seek advice and consultation from other Board members
• Develop, oversee, and/or sponsor pooled resource initiatives specifically designed to meet the needs of Centers

Our History

In 1965 the Texas Legislature passed the Texas Mental Health and Mental Retardation Act, now known as the Texas Mental Health and Intellectual Disabilities Act. This Act established a state agency to operate legislatively directed services for people with mental illness and intellectual disabilities and authorized the creation of Community Centers to serve as local agencies to work in partnership with the state and federal government to develop community-based services as alternatives to institutional care.

In 1976 Ward Burke, Frank M. Adams, Woodrow W. “Woody” Allen, and other Center trustees recognized the magnitude of what it would take to carry out the promises of the 1965 Act. In response, they founded the Texas Council of Community Centers to serve as a unifying organization through which Community Centers work together as a public system of care.

Today, the Texas Council upholds the original, unifying purpose, by advocating on behalf of Centers, fostering a strong internal communication network, and actively seeking to improve the resources necessary to carry out the broad public mission of the Centers.

Staff

Board of Directors