Council adds funding to bolster Integral Care’s mental health efforts

Responding to the need for more mental health workers to staff Integral Care’s Expanded Mobile Crisis Outreach Team, City Council on Thursday voted to allocate additional funding to the program.

The action will inject more than $1.4 million into the diversion program, drawing dollars from the city’s 2025 budget stabilization reserve fund. Council initiated the additional EMCOT funding last year as part of a budget amendment brought by Council Member Ryan Alter. The funding boost will enable Integral Care to hire more mental health professionals and expand EMCOT operations to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

EMCOT’s work centers on providing short-term, community-based interventions to stabilize individuals experiencing a psychiatric crisis. This type of response is designed to divert those individuals from jail or hospital emergency rooms.

Aloki Shah, president of United Workers of Integral Care, applauded the action prior to Thursday’s vote, thanking Council for its continued investment in alternative first-response programs.

“The work you are funding here – funding mental health crisis teams, expanding non-police responses to crises and recognizing the value of this approach – is setting an example for the rest of the country,” she said. “This amendment is a testament to the city’s commitment to a future where mental health care is prioritized, where crisis response does not default to law enforcement and lives are protected instead of lost.”

The funding, she added, will go a long way toward addressing long-standing staffing shortages.

Shah has made crisis response a rallying cry for mental health professionals to handle emergency calls rather than law enforcement officers.  The push for expanded local crisis response gained urgency following the 2019 fatal shooting of Mauris DeSilva, who was experiencing a mental health crisis when he was shot by former Austin police officer Christopher Taylor. Taylor was convicted last year in DeSilva’s death.

The additional funding, Alter said, “will help ensure that we have mental health professionals responding to emergency calls where it might have otherwise gone to a police officer or someone who necessarily doesn’t have the right training or is the right response professional.”

Other Council members added similar sentiments.

“I find it wonderful how the city of Austin has designed some very innovative pilot programs that have shown success for some of the biggest challenges that we as a city, and we as a country, are facing,” said Council Member Krista Laine. “I wholeheartedly welcome the more robust rollout of these programs.”

Council Member Mike Siegel also acknowledged the role of the United Workers union in its negotiations with Integral Care’s executive leadership to expand EMCOT’s staffing and work shifts.

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