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AUSTIN (AP) – It had only been a year since Estelle Sievert and her wife, Jane, joined the foster care program at SAFE Alliance in Austin when they were introduced to 3-week-old Noah in 2022.

The couple immediately fell in love with their soon-to-be adopted son but knew the future might contain some challenges. The infant’s biological parent had a lifetime of severe mental illness compounded by years of using methamphetamines and PCP that went unaddressed, and studies show that trauma and mental illness can be passed down through generations.

This meant the early stages of this child’s life could be the key to ensuring a healthy physical and mental future.

“We wanted to take a proactive approach to parenting to set him up with skills from very early on to identify emotions and validate his feelings,” Sievert said. “Kind of preparing for whatever may come down the line.”

Among the resources the couple found was Austin-based Mainspring Schools, a child care center that has built a nationally recognized mental health program for children as young as infants and toddlers.

Although a focus on mental wellness for infants, toddlers, and kindergarteners started to develop about 30 years ago, a growing number of child care centers, such as Mainspring, are emphasizing mental health as much as literacy in their curriculum — that the ability to express emotions and form relationships is equally crucial to school success as learning to read at an early age.

Additionally, Texas officials — after lagging behind other states such as Arkansas and Colorado for decades — are starting to study the current state of early childhood mental health care in Texas to determine the best way to create a statewide mental health system for the state’s youngest residents — an effort driven in large part by the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the pandemic accelerated incidents of mental health concerns, rates of childhood mental health challenges and suicide had been rising steadily for at least a decade before and have only risen further.

In Texas, more than 500,000 children were diagnosed with anxiety or depression in 2020, an increase of 23% since 2016, according to a 2023 Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute report on child and youth behavioral health.

Seventy-one percent of Texas youth with mental health issues will go untreated, compared with the national average of 61.5%, due in part to a severe shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists in the state. Jarring statistics like these point to the necessity for early identification and intervention in facilities that touch the most children at very young ages — child care centers.

In partnership with nonprofits like United Way, grassroots organizations do much of the work in early child care mental health, a feat that has impressed the most ardent supporters of children’s mental wellness.

“You will hear people say, ‘Oh c’mon, it’s just child care,’ but no, it’s so much more. This can alter the direction of these kids’ lives,” said Colin Denby Swanson, executive director of Mainspring Schools.
Mental wellness in toddlers

While it’s too early to tell if Noah has inherited mental illnesses, he can become overwhelmed in certain everyday situations. The Sieverts found that a traditional day care setting was too intense for their child.

However, finding a preschool or day care that fits those needs was more complex than expected.

“We learned quickly not all day cares are created equally,” Sievert said.

Mainspring Schools, where Noah has been enrolled in since early 2023, prepares children ages 6 weeks to 5 years old for success in school through early education and mental wellness. This includes specializing in trust-based relational intervention designed to help children who have experienced adversity. Children with these needs often have trouble trusting adults, which frequently leads to perplexing behavior at a young age.

Mainspring Schools tries to address this issue through monthly family dinners and weekly family support nights, where the children and their parents can form a relationship while receiving parenting advice from licensed professionals. The school also has a low child-to-teacher ratio of four to one, allowing for more detailed learning and observation.

“We wanted a program that didn’t use the traditional punitive punishments for children,” Sievert said. “Mainspring School shared the same language that we used at home and understanding of support we felt was needed. We are already seeing the results of this work.”

At 1 or 2 years old, understanding and managing one’s behaviors and reactions becomes critical. At 2 to 3 years old, a child with good mental health will continue to interact with people and build healthy relationships, including copying what other people say and do — a primary reason why young children and their parents can benefit from a robust mental wellness program in a child care center, said Barbara Grant Boneta, director of the Success by 6 coalition, a childhood wellness program in Travis County.

“We are almost teaching adults how to allow children to be children again. We are focusing on forming a loving relationship and giving kids time and space to have big feelings and help them label those feelings,” Boneta said.

This is a change to the child-rearing process where literacy and education at an early age were given priority in child care facilities and preschools. Studies have found play and good mental health are just as key to success in school later on in life as much as literacy does.

“The two can go hand in hand,” Boneta said. “It’s one of those things you want to infuse throughout the curriculum.”
The pandemic’s impact

Boneta said trauma-informed care programs like those at Mainspring Schools doesn’t need to be limited to families who have dealt with severe trauma, since the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on young children is still being studied.

“Families were stressed, and it was a pressure cooker, and children could not form relationships,” Boneta said. “Some of these preschoolers and kindergartners never got to go to a library or gymnastics class before entering elementary school. They missed out on key experiences.”

Children born during the pandemic scored lower in gross motor, fine motor and social-emotional development than before, according to a Columbia University research study. Children with poor or underdeveloped social and emotional skills display more challenging behavior, including anger, withdrawal, anxiety, and aggression.

Additionally, since the onset of the pandemic, fewer toddlers and young children have been receiving early intervention services. Underidentification could increase referrals in elementary schools in the next few years.

The pandemic shuttered many child care facilities, making it hard for parents to find programs like Mainspring Schools, said Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, founder of the Center for Youth Wellness and former Surgeon General of California, when she visited Mainspring Schools last month.

In 2023, the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Institute for Excellence in Mental Health attempted to collect data from state programs and organizations implementing trauma-informed care to infants and early childhood. What they found was that there was no universal understanding of Texas’ approach to delivering infant and early childhood mental health care, meaning it currently looks different from community to community.

“This is precisely the type of program I was talking about when I said there were solutions to adverse childhood trauma, and it can make all the difference in the world,” Harris said. “We need to ask ourselves how we can all play our part as a community because if we address this in our children, we can transform the outcomes of entire communities.”
Texas’ progress

The state of Texas is ready to listen. In 2023, the federal government awarded the state $16 million a year until December 2025 to address the gaps in its early childhood system, which were made worse by the COVID-19 crisis.

This has led to a partnership between UT-Austin’s mental health institute and the Texas Workforce Commission to analyze the landscape of infant and early childhood mental health and present recommendations for a state system. The institute’s researchers interviewed 14 states and nine Texas child care stakeholders and conducted two surveys of statewide early childhood programs to determine the best way to create a statewide toddler and early childhood mental health care system in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Texas Legislature also directed the Statewide Behavioral Health Coordinating Council to develop a children’s mental health strategic plan to be published Dec. 1. The plan will cover children from birth through 17 years of age.

These efforts will complement the state’s Early Childhood Intervention program, which supports families with children from birth through 35 months of age who have disabilities or delays in any area of development, including social-emotional development. The program offers counseling, behavior intervention, occupational therapy, social work, specialized skills training and case management.

Although Texas has no statewide effort, many states for decades have used infant and early childhood mental health consultants as a critical component of their continuum of care, especially for children from birth to 5 years old.

Infant and early childhood mental health consultants primarily work in homes or in early childhood education settings with the adults in the young children’s lives to build their capacity to support their child’s healthy social and emotional development — before formalized intervention is needed.

Arkansas has a statewide program established in 2004 and overseen by the University of Arkansas School of Medical Services. The university provides all training and supervision to consultants across the state.

Colorado’s Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation program focuses on building a qualified workforce by investing in higher education pathways, such as the Colorado State University School of Social Work’s mental health consultant program.

Connecticut is the national leader in infant and early childhood mental health consultations. Established in 2002, it was the first state to standardize its state program model, which is overseen by a nonprofit organization called Advanced Behavioral Health.
Workforce strain

To achieve a statewide program similar to what other states have created, Texas officials must develop a workforce for this specific field.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry estimates that the country needs 47 child and adolescent psychiatrists per 100,000 children. In Texas, there are roughly 10 CAPs per 100,000 children, illustrating the dire state of youth mental health services.

“There isn’t a lot of funding available, and you got to be trained in this and have the education around this, and unless you are in a place that can give you that training, it can be hard to get into the industry,” said Boneta.

Meanwhile, child care centers, where many of these youngest Texans can receive mental health services, have struggled since the COVID-19 pandemic.

About one-third of Texas child care centers and homes closed at some point during the pandemic, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

This is due to the cost of running a child care facility.

More than 75% of Mainspring’s students receive need-based tuition subsidies or scholarships, but state and federal reimbursements through programs like Early Head Start and the Texas Workforce Commission cover less than half of that amount.

“For a program like Mainspring, the cost is about $2,100 to $2,400 per child per month,” said Swanson, executive director of Mainspring, which has an annual budget of $2.3 million “We rely exclusively on grants and individual giving to support the family services piece.”

The Texas Legislature has attempted to address the child care crisis by allowing cities and counties to exempt specific child care centers from some or all of their property taxes, but local governments have been slow to adopt the exemptions.

In addition to a full property exemption for child care centers, Travis County leaders are allowing voters to determine in November whether to create a 2.5 cent property tax hike to infuse $75 million into child care.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to address child care in our county and support the mental health services needed here,” Aaron DeLaO, vice president of impact for United Way for Greater Austin, said about the tax initiative. “We are on the cusp of being able to address generational trauma in our communities.”

Noah just turned 2 years old this year, and the Sieverts and Mainspring Schools are starting to work on his emotional regulation and finding out how important it is for parents to model behaviors.

For the family, there isn’t an age too young or too old for mental wellness education.

“It makes just as much sense to them as anything else we are telling them at that age,” Sievert said. “So why not start talking earlier about mental health and just identify feelings and how to deal with them?”

DALLAS – Baptist News Global reports that more than a week after he was outed as a former gay porn star, school voucher evangelist Corey DeAngelis is taking on his critics and saying he refuses to be cancelled. DeAngelis appears to have been fired by the American Federation for Children, a conservative advocacy group for private and charter schools founded by Betsy DeVos, after he was identified as the actor “Seth Rose” in the videos that still are available for viewing on the gay porn site GayHoopla. DeAngelis is listed as a “contributor” to Project 2025 and serves as an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. He also is known as a fierce advocate for school vouchers, believes the U.S. Department of Education should be abolished, opposes LGBTQ rights and opposes “left-wing indoctrination” in “government schools.” His new book, The Parent Revolution, claims to teach parents how to “rescue” their children from “the radicals ruining our schools.”

In an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network, DeAngelis admitted he is, in fact, the person seen in the sexually explicit videos. “There are images and videos circulating of me from my college days about a decade ago that I’m not proud of,” he said. “They’re embarrassing.” After more than a week of silence, he emerged to tell about getting involved in porn as a young adult and to declare a warning about the dangers others face today. “If I was able to be lured in to make bad decisions as a young adult in college, just imagine how much worse it could be for younger people,” he said. And he claims his own experience is what drives his fight against public education and government-controlled schools. “So I fought against this kind of material being included in the classroom,” he said. “I’ve been consistent. I’ve changed my life. People change over time.” There is no evidence of gay porn being included in any public school classroom in America.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that Elon Musk appears to be jumping back into Texas politics, making the first state-level political donation under his own name in nearly a decade. The Tesla and SpaceX chief gave $1 million to Texas for Lawsuit Reform PAC, the political arm of a powerful pro-business group known for lobbying against what it sees as frivolous lawsuits. The September donation, from the Elon Musk Revocable Trust, was reported in the PAC’s quarterly fundraising report filed this week. Musk’s donation accounted for about a third of the $2.9 million the PAC reported raising, and was the largest gift the group reported. The second largest was from Miriam Adelson, a conservative megadonor who gave $500,000.

The Austin billionaire has moved much of his business empire to Texas and has become increasingly active in Republican politics this election cycle, launching a super PAC supporting Donald Trump and appearing at the former president’s rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend. Musk also gave $289,100 to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which works to elect House Republicans, in August. The state donation comes after Musk secretly funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into an effort to unseat progressive Travis County District Attorney José Garza in the Democratic primary race earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported. The paper reported the Musk-backed group that targeted Garza, Saving Austin, is connected to another group now supporting U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s reelection bid, Saving Texas. Texans for Lawsuit Reform is a business-aligned lobbying group co-founded by Dick Weekley, a Houston real estate developer and GOP donor who reportedly helped Musk launch his pro-Trump super PAC.

AUSTIN – The Houston Chronicle reports the operator of the Texas power grid said it’s reached “a reasonable compromise” with renewable energy developers after more than a year of stalemate on technical issues with some solar, wind and battery storage resources it warned could conceivably lead to “catastrophic grid failure.” Clean energy companies fought the initial requirements the Electric Reliability Council of Texas wanted to impose, cautioning they could be forced to shut down large swaths of the fast-growing wind, solar and battery resources on the Texas grid if made to install expensive hardware upgrades. The parties agreed in August that owners of clean energy resources on the ERCOT grid must instead implement all available software and settings changes to meet the new requirements. This proposal is expected to fix the “vast majority” of problems found in three of the worst failures of the past few years, which prompted the rules change in the first place, according to clean energy developers and an industry consultant who studied those events.

The new rule will “improve reliability over time” as resources comply with its terms, ERCOT spokesperson Trudi Webster wrote in an email. The Public Utility Commission of Texas, which regulates ERCOT, issued an order approving the new rule last month. “While this will be an enormous lift for (clean energy resource) owners, it is far better than the alternative,” Eric Goff, an industry consultant who emerged as the lead negotiator for renewable developers, wrote in a social media post. Clean energy resources – particularly solar and batteries – have grown rapidly on the Texas power grid in recent years as the technology becomes less expensive and federal incentives boost domestic manufacturing and development. They’ve been credited with adding a healthy cushion of supply to the grid, especially on the hottest summer days, lowering electricity costs and helping decarbonize electricity generation, the third-largest contributor of climate-warming emissions in Texas

AUSTIN (AP) – Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Tuesday that the Legislature will review all of the state’s existing contracts with the firm Deloitte after it selected a company whose CEO was previously convicted of an “embezzlement scheme” as a project finalist for a low-interest, taxpayer-funded loan program to build new power plants in Texas.

Last year, the state tapped Deloitte to administer the Texas Energy Fund, a $5 billion voter-approved fund to provide 3% interest loans to build or upgrade gas-fueled power plants. State lawmakers got the idea for the fund after Winter Storm Uri overwhelmed the state power grid in 2021, prompting blackouts that left millions of Texans without electricity or heat for days in freezing temperatures.

When the company and the state’s Public Utility Commission announced the list of 17 finalists in late August, they included a project from Aegle Power, whose CEO Kathleen Smith was convicted in 2017 in what the U.S. Justice Department called an “ embezzlement scheme.” Aegle Power also included the name of another company, NextEra, which told the PUC it was included on the application without its knowledge or consent.

Patrick’s announcement of the review came after representatives from Deloitte were peppered with questions at a joint legislative hearing Tuesday about how these details were not uncovered in the vetting process. Smith previously told the Houston Chronicle there was “absolutely never any embezzlement.”

“When questioned at today’s hearing, Deloitte had no believable explanation for the many troubling details they failed to uncover during their vetting process,” Patrick said. “These details could have been revealed to them by a quick Google search.”

At the meeting, Deloitte representatives said they had not reached out to NextEra, the company that was listed in the application without their knowledge, because their process is not to reach out to applicants until the next phase of due diligence. But representatives acknowledged they should have included a more thorough review of applicants earlier in the process.

The PUC rejected Aegle Power’s application on Sept. 4 after the issues came to light. But the incident has put a cloud over the rollout of the fund, angering lawmakers and raising questions about the agency’s ability to run the program.

“The lack of due diligence is astounding to me,” said Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, during Tuesday’s meeting.

The PUC was originally created to regulate the state’s electric utilities market, but its responsibilities have exploded since Uri after lawmakers passed laws to strengthen Texas’ power grid. Its budget ballooned and staff grew by 50%.

While the Legislature has increased funding and staff for the PUC over the past several years, lawmakers and experts said the agency likely needed more resources to handle all the new responsibilities it’s been given to shore up the grid and the state’s power market.

On Tuesday, PUC executives told lawmakers they relied too much on Deloitte’s reputation to administer the project and should have made sure they were executing the contract satisfactorily.

“We had too much of an arm’s length relationship with our contractor and I should have ensured we were more heavily involved in the review,” PUC Chair Thomas Gleeson said.

Gleeson previously stated the project never would have received a loan because of existing guardrails in the process, but told lawmakers that PUC will review its processes and cut Deloitte’s $107 million contract by at least 10 percent.

Patrick said in the letter Tuesday that he supported that effort stating that Deloitte must be held financially accountable for “their blunder that set back the Texas Energy Fund’s ability to help deliver more megawatts of dispatchable power in a timely fashion.”

AUSTIN (AP) — Videos from the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that police originally failed to make public show officers scrambling to treat victims, parents running near the building and dozens of law enforcement agents standing outside Robb Elementary School.

The hours of new video made public Tuesday include body-camera footage similar to what officials had previously released. Taken together, the footage underlines the hesitant police response in the small South Texas city, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers inside a fourth-grade classroom in one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history.

Police have said the additional videos were discovered days after a large collection of audio and video recordings were released in August.

In one chaotic scene, officers can be seen doing chest compressions on one victim outside and others yelling for help. “No pulse! Slow compression,” says a first responder. Streaks of blood line a crowded hallway and pleas for help continue to ring out as victims are carried out.

A Uvalde officer was put on paid leave and subsequently resigned following the discovery of the additional videos in August. Sgt. Donald Page said that his body camera footage was missing after the initial release, which led to officials turning over the unreleased video to the district attorney’s office. The department announced an internal investigation soon after, but it remains unclear how the newly released footage was discovered.

The release of the material by city officials over the summer followed a prolonged legal fight with The Associated Press and other news organizations.

The delayed law enforcement response to the May 24, 2022, shooting has been widely condemned as a massive failure: Nearly 400 officers waited more than 70 minutes before confronting the gunman in a classroom filled with dead and wounded children and teachers in the South Texas city of about 15,000 people, 80 miles west of San Antonio.

While terrified students and teachers called 911 from inside classrooms, dozens of officers stood in the hallway trying to figure out what to do. Desperate parents who had gathered outside the building pleaded with them to go in.

Previously released audio recordings contained 911 calls from terrified instructors and students as gunshots rang out amid pleas for help.

Federal investigations into law enforcement’s response attributed breakdowns in communication and inadequate training for their failure to confront the gunman, with some even questioning whether officers prioritized their own lives over those of children and teachers.

Two of the responding officers face multiple criminal charges of abandonment and endangerment. Former Uvalde school Police Chief Pete Arredondo and former school officer Adrian Gonzales have pleaded not guilty. Arredondo, who made his first court appearance last month, has stated he thinks he’s been scapegoated for the heavily scrutinized police response.

HOUSTON (AP) — A former Houston police officer was sentenced to 60 years in prison on Tuesday for the murder of a married couple during a drug raid that revealed systemic corruption in the department’s narcotics unit and prompted criticism of the law enforcement agency and its tactics.

Gerald Goines was convicted in the January 2019 deaths of Dennis Tuttle, 59, and Rhogena Nicholas, 58. The couple were shot along with their dog after officers burst into their home using a “no-knock” warrant that didn’t require them to announce themselves before entering.

Prosecutors said Goines lied to get the search warrant approved and that his actions were part of a pattern of wrongful drug arrests and convictions of innocent individuals during his 34-year law enforcement career.

“Gerald Goines has been a stain on the reputation of every honest cop in our community, a community that he terrorized through corruption worthy of the movie ‘Training Day,’” said Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg.

Goines, 60, looked down but had no visible reaction as he heard the sentences for each count of murder, which will run concurrently. The jury, which had deliberated for more than 10 hours over two days on his sentence, also fined him $20,000. Legal experts have said it is rare for a police officer to be charged and convicted for an on-duty killing.

Goines didn’t make eye contact when Ryan Tuttle sat on the witness stand after the sentencing, with a framed photograph of his father and stepmother, and said his family was still waiting for answers from the ex-officer about why he targeted the couple. Goines, who did not testify during the monthlong trial, remained silent.

“My father and my stepmother were not involved in any drug dealing. They were good people. They did not deserve this,” Ryan Tuttle said, and then stared at Goines as he walked away.

During closing arguments in the trial’s punishment phase, prosecutors had asked for a life sentence. Goines’ attorneys had asked for the minimum sentence of five years, saying Goines had dedicated his life to keeping drugs off the streets.

“We still don’t believe legally that he is guilty of the crime of felony murder and we look forward to having the appellate courts review this,” Nicole DeBorde, one of Goines’ attorneys, told reporters after the sentence was read.

Goines had been free on bond since he was charged, but he was taken into custody following his conviction last month by the same jury.

Prosecutors said Goines falsely claimed an informant had bought heroin at the couple’s home from a man with a gun, setting up the violent confrontation in which the couple was killed and four officers, including Goines, were shot and wounded, and a fifth was injured. A Texas Ranger who investigated the raid testified that the officers fired first, killing the dog and likely provoking Tuttle’s gunfire.

His lawyers acknowledged he lied to get the search warrant, but sought to diminish the impact. Two witnesses — a fellow officer and the judge who signed the warrant — said the raid never would have happened if Goines had told the truth.

Investigators later found only small amounts of marijuana and cocaine in the house, and while Houston’s police chief at the time, Art Acevedo, initially praised Goines as being “tough as nails,” he later suspended him when the lies emerged. Goines later retired as the probes continued.

The probe into the drug raid uncovered allegations of much wider corruption. Goines was among a dozen officers tied to the narcotics squad who were later indicted on other charges. A judge dismissed charges against some of them, but a review of thousands of cases involving the unit led prosecutors to dismiss many cases, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has overturned at least 22 convictions linked to Goines.

Ryan Tuttle said he hoped the deaths of his father and stepmother would spur police reform not just in Houston but around the country.

“If it’s happening in Houston, it’s happening everywhere,” Tuttle said. “We have to make sure this stops.”

Ogg said the police department reviewed various policies after the raid but that a thorough revamping of narcotics enforcement by the agency has yet to happen.

An audit of the narcotics unit done after the raid found officers made hundreds of errors in cases, often weren’t thorough in their investigations and lacked supervision.

In a brief statement after the jury’s sentence, Houston police said, “We respect the jury’s decision in the trial involving Gerald Goines and thank the jurors for their time and service.”

“This is not an indictment against police officers. There are 99% upstanding police officers. This was also about sending a message to them, that we believe in them, we support them. What we don’t support is corruption,” said prosecutor Tanisha Manning.

Goines also made a drug arrest in 2004 in Houston of George Floyd, whose 2020 death at the hands of a Minnesota police officer sparked a nationwide reckoning on racism in policing. A Texas board in 2022 declined a request that Floyd be granted a posthumous pardon for that drug conviction.

Goines also faces federal criminal charges in connection with the raid, and federal civil rights lawsuits filed by the families of Tuttle and Nicholas against Goines, 12 other officers and the city of Houston are set to be tried in November.