The Center For Health Care Services Foundation

This year, The Center Foundation is proud to participate in Big Give SA to support Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA) training for teachers across Bexar County.

In 2019, Texas House Bill 3 was passed, requiring all Texas school districts to provide any staff interacting with youth with mandatory mental health awareness training. YMHFA meets every state's requirements and equips teachers with the skills to recognize when a student is struggling, respond appropriately, and connect them to help.

But here's the challenge: while this training is required, funding falls far short of the need. The funding provided currently covers training for only 1,380 people. To put that in perspective, in Bexar County, our largest school districts, NISD, NEISD and SAISD alone employ more than 28,400 staff members, not to mention other districts in our county. Each training is valued at $170 per teacher, making community support essential.

Since launching our MHFA program in 2014, the Center has trained over 9,099 educators. We trained 1,752 teachers and school staff from public, charter, private, and higher education institutions this fiscal year. The impact is immense: each trained teacher impacts an average of 125 students annually, meaning that every eight teachers trained can positively impact 1,000 students annually.

And the need has never been greater.

• Suicide is the second leading cause of death for Texas youth ages 10–24.

• In 2023, 1 in 3 Texas high school students reported persistent sadness or hopelessness.

• ER visits for youth self-harm have risen more than 40% in the past decade.

Early intervention saves lives, and teachers are often the first to notice something wrong. With proper training, they can be the difference between a student silently struggling and a student getting connected to life-saving care.

That's why this Big Give aims to raise $10,000+ to train more teachers in Bexar County public, charter, and private schools. Together, we can give our educators the tools they need to protect our children and strengthen our schools' mental health.

Who We Are

Improving Lives Everyday
Our Mission
The Center for Health Care Services improves the lives of people with mental health disorders, substance use challenges and intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Our services for adults, children and veterans include:
Mental Health
Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD)
Substance Use Treatment

Our Core Values
We Care
We genuinely care about our clients, our coworkers, our partners and our community. We care about the services we provide and positive outcomes for all our stakeholders.

We’ll Find a Way
Hope and Healing happen with a continuous and constant search to create and implement better ways to do what we do. Not everything comes with a set of instructions. As innovators in our field, we often explore uncharted territory. All it takes is some common sense, confidence, and unwavering will to succeed. We believe there is a solution, and/or “another way,” even when it seems at first there isn’t. We’ll find a way.

Diversity
We value who we are and who we serve. We recognize that each person is different, with different skills, backgrounds, knowledge, and experience. We all have something special to contribute to!

Initiative
We encourage our employees to take action and give their best every day. We embrace an environment that empowers employees to lead and make decisions. We don’t dwell on our problems, we fix them!

Service
We work to meet the needs of every client every time! No exceptions! No excuses! We are committed to providing great, safe service, going the extra mile for our clients and one another.

We Practice Integrity
We believe in unconditional fairness. We recognize that the high road (respect, honor, good faith, accountability, trust, transparency, ethics and social responsibility) is not a short cut – it is what you do when no one is looking over your shoulder!

“Eventually, three things always come out: the Sun, the Moon, and the Truth.” – Buddha