Bastrop County stretches 896 square miles across Central Texas.
At its northernmost point sits the city of Elgin, and traveling east from there is McDade, not quite a city, but a census-designated place, a Census-Designated Place, small and easy to pass through without stopping.
On a windy afternoon, the Child Passenger Safety Technician team from Bastrop County Cares pulled up to McDade High School in their resource van loaded with car seats. The school was hosting a career fair, and tucked into that event was something the Child Passenger Safety Technicians had spent weeks arranging, a car seat installation and safety check for the families of McDade. They had coordinated schedules, secured a spot within the career fair, and partnered with Dell Children’s to supply the car seats.
When the appointment slots opened, the calls came in quickly. Thirteen parents signed up. The team expected that.
On the day of the event, however, only seven showed up as scheduled. Six did not. And then something unexpected happened. Six parents, none of them with appointments, pulled into the parking lot on their own, having heard about the event or simply noticed the resource van and the cones. The technicians had seen this before. Rather than turn them away, they asked the walk-ins to wait and promised to work them in. By the end of the afternoon, all six had their needs met.
Getting the word out in a community like McDade takes more than one channel. The school announced during the career fair that the team was working on car seats in the parking lot. A Facebook post had already gone out. Both brought people in. The team rarely expects every appointment to be kept. A car seat installation, unlike a doctor or dentist visit, is easy to postpone. Why families treat it as less urgent is a question the team hasn’t answered. What they have learned is that when word spreads, people come.
It’s a quiet lesson the team carried home: schedules are imperfect, life gets in the way, and needs don’t disappear because someone missed their slot. And, there is always someone else with the same need ready to take that open place. The team leaves room for that.
Bastrop County Cares has made a deliberate choice to bring services into communities rather than waiting for families to find their way to a central office. McDade is one of those communities, small, often overlooked, and full of parents who needed exactly what showed up that afternoon. A wait list is already forming, and the team is planning the next event.
To learn more about events like these, contact Andy Esquivel at andy@bastropcares.org.
