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In May 1966 the State of Texas and the Bell County Commissioners’ Court entered into an agreement to study the needs for a mental health and mental retardation facility. In September 1967 the Bell County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Center, Inc. (Center) was formed and began services in Bell County. Dr. R.K. Gaines, psychiatrist with Scott and White Hospital was contracted to be the acting Director. Mrs. June Logan, a social worker, was hired as Assistant Director, and Warren Stewart, psychologist, was also hire part time to provide services. Mrs. Mildred Melvin was hired as the Center receptionist, and thus began community mental health and mental retardation services in Bell County. The first Center location was in the basement of the Bell County Annex in Belton, Texas. Article Four of the Articles of Incorporation indicated the Center’s purpose as:

To provide for the conservation and restoration of mental health among the people of Bell County, Texas and surrounding counties and to promote the public understanding of mental retardation and mental health.

To provide, coordinate, develop and improve services for the mentally retarded persons in Bell County, Texas and surrounding counties, including all services concerned with research, prevention and the detection of mental retardation and all services related to the education, training, rehabilitation, care treatment, supervision, and control of mentally retarded persons to the end that they will be afforded the opportunity to develop their respective mental capabilities to the fullest practicable extent and to live as useful and productive lives as possible.

To aid, assist, and cooperate with agencies of the State of Texas and the United States and other public bodies and non-profit corporations in providing for the conservation and restoration of mental health among the people…."

In May 1968 the Center received its first funding grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. The Center then began to provide outpatient services, inpatient services by contract, consultation and education, emergency and day services. In 1968 the Center began a non-public school for children from 3 to 16 years old who had mental retardation. In 1971 The Center established operations in Killeen on Rancier Avenue. In February 1973 the Center moved its primary operations from the basement of Bell County Annex to the Hartley Towers, the renamed Hawn Hotel. In the spring of 1974 the Center’s Board of Trustees voted to expand it service boundaries to include Coryell, Erath, Hamilton, Lampasas, and Milam Counties. In September 1974 the Bell County MHMR Center officially dissolved and the new organization known as Central Counties Center for MHMR Services (CCCMHMRS) was formed.

In 1975 the Center moved its operating headquarters from the Hartley Towers to the former King’s Daughters Hospital building at 304 S. 22^nd Street in Temple. In 1976 CCCMHMRS received an 8-year federal Rural MH Operations Grant which enabled the Center to fully establish mental health services to its rural counties. At that time Coryell County Commissioners made available their former hospital for outpatient, day programs and residential services for persons with mental health and mental retardation. In 1995 the mental health and mental retardation day and residential services closed due to a reduction of TDMHMR funds. In 1975 Early Childhood Intervention services were begun for children from birth to age 3 who have a developmental delay. In 1976 Erath County left the organization to become a part of the newly formed Pecan Valley MHMR Center. In 1981 the Austin State Hospital mental health outreach services in Cameron and Lampasas were transferred to CCCMHMRS to further community-based services in these two counties. During this same period from 1976 to 1981 the Center began to focus more of its mental retardation services on adults, and began day habilitation and vocational training services. In the fall of 1981 the Center implemented its first computerized Management Information System and took steps to rework and reduce internal paperwork.

Due to funding reductions in the early 1980’s the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation Services (TDMHMRS) narrowed the population to be served with state funds. TDMHMRS identified the "priority population" to be persons with severe and chronic mental illness and persons with mental retardation who have an IQ of 70 or less with major skill deficits. This TDMHMRS directive greatly narrowed the population the Center could serve from that point on.

In 1983 the city of Copperas Cove constructed a human services building on the east side of town and the Center moved its child and adolescent mental health and adult mental retardation vocational training services into that location. In 1984 the Center began to offer case management services for mental health and mental retardation service consumers. In 1985 the Center opened it Crisis Stabilization Unit in the third floor of the main Center in Temple, which it operated until February 1996 when these services were contracted to Metroplex Hospital in Killeen, Texas. The Center operated Crisis Stabilization Services at Metroplex Hospital until June 2000 when publicly funded inpatient services closed in the five-county catchment area due to insufficient funding. .

In 1986 mental retardation services expanded greatly as funding was worked out to bring adults with mental retardation out of the state schools for residential placement in communities. The vocational training services were growing such that the Center formed a service department known as Central Counties Industries (CCI). The Center negotiated mowing contracts and litter pick-up contracts with the cities of Temple and Gatesville to employ the Center’s MHMR consumers. Work contracts were also negotiated with the officials at Fort Hood and the Dept. of Transportation to do cleaning contracts. These vocational training contracts were continued into the 1990’s. The last of these contracts had to be given up due to a dramatic reduction in TDMHMR funding in 1995. In mid 1987 the Bell County Commissioners’ Court donated property in the Temple industrial park to construct a vocational workshop. The new CCI building was dedicated November 14, 1989. During the same time Bell County Officials assisted the Center in negotiating the donation of the former Killeen Daily Herald building by Mrs. Sue Mayborn, which was dedicated in 1989 as the "Frank W. Mayborn Human Services Building." Adult and children’s mental health services and adult mental retardation habilitation and vocational services continue to be provided at this location.

In 1989 the Center began an HIV education and prevention service, and in 1991 began to provide outpatient substance abuse services for adults. Both services were provided through 1995 when TCADA reduced the funding such that the services could not continue.

In 1994 the Center first connected all of its major operating sites into an electronic computer network.

In 1973 the Milam Association for Retarded Citizens (MARC) with assistance from Brenham State School began a day treatment program for people with mental retardation in Rockdale, Texas. The MARC Board provided the facility while Brenham provided the staff to operate the service. In 1990 the services provided were officially transferred to CCCMHMRS. In 2002 the MARC Center built a new service building on the Rockdale Hospital grounds where services continue to be provided for adults with mental retardation.

Children’s mental health services were provided from 1976 to 1984 under a federal grant and were discontinued until 1990 when state funding became available to provide services again. Funding was further expanded in 1992 and children’s mental health services were then available directly in each county. Central Counties hired its first child psychiatrist in 1994 and continues to have a child psychiatrist on its medical staff. In 2000 the Center acquired the former Dr. Shelton’s clinic building and remodeled it for our Temple Child Mental Health Clinic at 317 N. 2^nd Street in Temple, Texas.

In 2001 the Center obtained a Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund grant to connect 13 Center sites in a videoconferencing network. The Center’s mental health clinics are now connected in a manner that telemedicine services can be made available at our remote clinics when the psychiatrist is in a different location.

Central Counties Center for MHMR Services has served over 70,000 people with mental disabilities in its three and a half decades of operations. The Center’s services have fluctuated over time as funding opportunities became available, and then dried up. The changing state and federal rules that accompany the Center’s funding have also played a role in determining what services are provided for specified populations in the Center’s five-county catchment area. The descriptions of activities at the Center, from fiscal year 1967 until now, tell a story of how the Center was started and continues to meet the complex challenges of the times. Much has been accomplished toward moving the Center from its early caretaker role to being a high quality, sophisticated, treatment agency that proudly serves the citizens in Bell, Coryell, Hamilton, Lampasas and Milam Counties.