Welcome back to this weekly meeting of the Health and Safety Committee with Denver City Council.

Coverage of the Health and Safety Committee starts now.

Good morning and welcome to uh the Health and Safety Committee meeting.

Today is September 17th.

My name is Daryl Watts, and I am honored to chair the Health and Safety Committee and also to represent all of the residents of the District 9.

We have one briefing today, and what?

No items on consent.

Oh, one item on consent.

But before we go to our briefing, why don't we have brief introductions by city council members?

I'll start on my right.

Brief.

Okay.

Good morning, Amanda.

So you're district five.

Hi everyone, Serena Gonzalez Coqueta is one of your council members at large.

Good morning, Paul Cashman, South Denver District 6, and gosh, I'm pleased to be here.

I'm glad you're here, sir.

Great.

Good morning, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4.

And Councilmember Torres, I know that you are on virtual if you can hear us.

Yep, Jamie Torres, West Denver District 3.

Thanks everyone for joining.

We have a presentation from Department of Safety on employee wellness and support services.

So Renee Masias and Emily Locke, I'll turn it over to both of you to begin the presentation.

All right.

Thank you.

My name is Renee Masias.

I am the director of employee wellness for the Department of Public Safety.

I do have some of our employees here that I'd like to introduce as well.

So Sarah Graytech, Amy Camargo, and then Devin Clark from Risk Management.

So they'll be available to answer any questions that you might have that might be particular to either a physical therapy program or our relationship with risk management.

Just to kind of give you a little bit of a background.

So I come to this position.

I have 21 years as a firefighter.

I retired as a division chief with Brighton Fire.

And then I also have my degree in exercise science, corporate wellness.

So designing and building exercise programs, wellness programs for corporations.

So that was my previous life before fire.

If you can give me a hand, Emily and change the slide.

All right, thank you.

So what I want to do is kind of just give you an overview of what we do, and then we'll kind of get into some of the specifics as far as what's under the wellness umbrella at the Department of Safety.

At the top of our org chart is risk management and human resources.

There's a significant amount of relationships and working and collaborating together as far as programs and things that we do and financial support through risk management and human resources.

And then underneath that the rest of the org chart, we have a physical therapy program, which we'll get into more details about.

We have a mental health services program, which I'm sure you guys will have some questions, and there's a lot to cover there as well.

Agency wellness programs.

So I'm not going to take credit for these.

These are all of our wellness coordinators that represent our agencies with police, fire, sheriff 911, and then all of our smaller groups in the Department of Safety.

And then we have all of our vendors, so all of our contracted uh providers, so our department physician, it could be our mental health services folks, our record management system, uh, some of our testing equipment that we use for our personnel.

Uh and then our education component, which we'll also talk about in a little bit more depth, where we have students that come on board uh as interns, um, as well as some of our providers that give us education and training to our employees.

Next slide, please.

All right, so here's where we're gonna get into a little bit of the finer details.

So, some of the program components that we look at.

We have 11 different contracts that we that we manage, uh, mostly dealing with schools, um, so that way we can take on students with our with our uh physical therapy program or within the department of safety.

Uh we have our equipment contracts and then our record management systems because naturally, as physical therapists, they have record management programs that they need to kind of keep track of and and for patient information.

Fully confidential uh for our employees to maintain their safety.

Uh and then we have our department physician.

We do have a nutritionist and then a strength and conditioning coach that helps and assist that academies, and we'll kind of talk about that a little bit later.

We do do a quite a bit of cross-agency support.

So I already mentioned risk management, but when we have an incident that occurs in the city, whether it is um a department of safety employee or somewhere otherwise, so like um Denver Human Services, we had an incident last year.

The employees were looking for immediate assistance.

We tried our normal means.

We're able to provide immediate help with them with one of our clinicians to get them through the initial phase of the experience that they were going through.

So we reach out.

If they reach out to me, we provide the resources to them.

We don't charge the other agency anything.

It's just it's we're here to support each other, right?

We're we're all employees of the city.

We've established a good relationship with Den and obviously human resources, Den.

And the reason why Den is because they have their own dispatch center, they take their own 911 calls, things like that.

Sometimes they're forgotten, and we want to make sure that they're included in this discussion and process as well.

When we look at education, we try to bring in as many speakers and presenters as we can or as much as our budget allows, but a lot of that revolves around peer support training and initial certification.

So and I'll highlight that a little bit more.

Education.

So one of the biggest things that I have always been a big proponent of is making sure that we have the foundation to be uh set this set the standard for folks.

And that being if we have a program that is extremely successful and it's very unique in that we have uh what we call tactical athletes.

That is not a very common profession to have fiscal therapists that are part of.

What a great opportunity to bring you local colleges and universities to take part in that program and learn.

And then hopefully we share our knowledge and then send them out to wherever they're gonna go for a profession.

Um exercise science students, the one thing that you can if if we bring them here as part of our internships, the exposure, the frequency, the number of patients or folks that they would get a chance to work with, is astronomical.

So it's what a great learning opportunity for them, and then again, send them out into the field to support other agencies and cities that have similar programs like ours.

The physical therapy program, we we and I'll be very proud of this one.

We set the standard uh in the industry.

Uh we have a rec uh we have a request for information packet that we send out.

Uh we're contacted almost every couple of weeks or so from a from a fire department, police department, sheriff's organization, college, whatever you have that's out there, contacts us and asks how are we doing it and how does it work and how much money does it save?

And you guys will get to see that money savings in a bit.

And then, of course, we have our mental health services, and we have a budgeted aspect of it, and we have a grant aspect of it, and I'll get into those finer details for you as well.

And then lastly, our multi-agency collaboration.

So we have risk management that's here that can speak to any of the questions regarding risk management, again, the airport.

Uh we do have agencies that are similar in that they provide some type of safety aspect.

So animal control would be one, and then our parks and rec rangers, and we have a partnership with them where they've used some of our resources as well.

Um we built out this program, we kind of wanted to take the approach of like how do we bring these folks on into our organizations and get them from pre-hired to retirement and do it safely, right?

Um, and so when we looked at it, we try to do a holistic approach where we look at physical wellness, we look at their personal safety, and then we look at their mental and emotional resiliency.

And then hopefully through combining all of those together, we're able to get them from point A to retirement, which is point Z, right?

Um, and what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna chunk out each component of that and we'll talk about it and highlight it specifically for you.

Go ahead.

So physical wellness, risk management has provided a tremendous amount of support for us.

We used to be when I first started with the city, it was very proactive and we've really made a strong push to go preventative.

What can what are the programs we can put in place that are going to support our employees ahead of time, ahead of a major incident or a traumatic event or anything like that to make sure that they're supported as best as we can.

And in doing so, a lot of the things that we've done with risk management have focused on cancer prevention, heart attack, stroke prevention, um, looking at human performance evaluations and human performance evaluations are the tests that they do before they even become police officer, firefighter, or sheriff.

Um we do have standards that we're supposed to meet, which is our NFPA standards or National Fire Protection Association, 1583, it's the national standard.

We have the law enforcement guidelines, which we're actually trying to make a push to make a standardized version of that versus a guideline.

Because right now we have so many police departments that are using different variables.

It'd be nice if we were all in unison as far as what the physical requirements are of that position.

And then we have strength and conditioning and nutrition through risk management.

In partnership with human resources, we do a lot of our wellness screenings for our civilian employees, and our sheriff deputies.

We review insurance data that we get from Kaiser and United Healthcare.

And the reason why that's important is what that data that we gather, we're able to get a little bit ahead and kind of predict what are the things that we might be looking at and focusing at for next year.

If we have a high incidence of stroke, maybe we should be teaching about that, right?

So those are some of the kind of things that we're looking at.

Then we have the vitality program, our nurse program, which is through the city, and then guidance resources, as well as our opt-in providers, which are other clinicians that work throughout the city.

And those are city programs that are available still to the Department of Safety.

And then the last one that's up here is physical therapy.

We have six physical therapists, two that are assigned to each agent major agency, so police, fire, sheriff.

But they do see all of our all of our department of safety employees when they're needed through direct access.

Our priority is for workers' comp patients.

So if they get injured on the job, we allow them the opportunity to go to that provider instead or our own providers instead of an outside provider, which actually saves us the city quite a bit of money.

And then they also provide academy support, wellness education, exercise programming and planning, special programs or projects that they're assigned, and then they actually are all certified peer support clinicians.

So they're able to provide some support to our employees because naturally, when a patient is on their table, they start to talk verbalize, and uh and we've been fortunate in the last few years that they've actually have saved lives of individuals who were suicidal and got them the resources where they needed to go.

So the program, you know, I don't know if you can put a value on dollar amount on that.

Um next slide, please.

All right, greater details on our on our PT program.

So as you see in front of you is the programs uh probably started a little bit before 2017, it was about 2015, uh, as a pilot, and then we expanded it out in 2017 to the Department of Safety, police fire sheriff at that time.

So the numbers that you're seeing here as we go through are from when all the organizations had had that support.

You'll see in 2020 to 2022, there's a dip and there's a cost to the city.

You can probably figure it out that that's COVID.

Our PTs were working from home or had limited access to our patients, and that actually cost us quite a bit of money.

Now that they've come back and they're in full strength, we had we had a cost savings in 2023 of 5.7 million to the city.

And in 2024, we had one of our employees leave, so we were short staffed.

And so you can see the drop there.

But overall, when you look at our costs, so their salaries that are included in it, the cost for supplies, the space that they're in, all of that is one call is the first column, versus going outside.

Our savings since 2017 is 3.2 million.

But if you look at the overtime savings, we are getting our employees back to work significantly faster than if they went to an outside uh resource.

So by keeping them internally, that gave us another 6.3 million dollars in savings to the city.

Uh not only that, but the employees are around, they're their peers, uh, they're working together, making sure that they're ready to go.

It helps expedite the process and then they have a better satisfaction through that process.

Is there anything else I might be missing from PTA?

The last chart on the bottom, what you'll see is what we recognize in about 2022, 2023, and based off of employee feedback.

We had folks that were going to, if you're a police officer, you can only go to police.

If you're a firefighter, you can go to only fire.

And you can only imagine what would happen, right?

We had a backlog.

We had people stacking up and waiting to get served service by our physical therapist.

What we did was we changed it.

We changed the model so that firefighters, police officers, they can go to any location that they wanted to.

We also opened it up to our department of safety employees to access the program.

That lowers the wait time for our folks, that makes it a little bit more equitable.

And instead of having an employee that's maybe at fire station one downtown, go all the way out to the training facility, they can come downtown to see Amy who's at the downtown detention center.

So it just makes makes a lot of sense.

And so our wait times have come down, and what you're actually seeing at the end of that is that all the groups are starting to marry up together and they're providing the right resources at the right time.

And I think it's been very, very beneficial for people.

Next one.

And I can and I can probably have Sarah speak to the fire academy because she's directly involved with that one.

The police academy made a change in 2024 to assist in making sure that we had the right resources there to support our folks.

And what we actually ended up recognizing through strength and conditioning of our folks, they were ready to go and perform better.

But surprisingly, we also noticed that we had a significant increase in lost work days because of less injuries.

So we went from a hundred and say maybe even 200 lost work days because of an academy.

We're down into the 78 in 2024, and so far this year is single digits.

We're trying to do our best with what we have and restructure some of the physical tests that they go through to make sure that they're ready for their profession.

On the fire academy side, there was a switch that was done for EMS, was put before the actual hands-on portion of the academy.

And what that did was that allowed folks who come from C level to get adjusted and acclimated to altitude, and so we're not booting them out of the academy, right?

It's it's allowing our folks to be trained and prepared for the rigors of being a firefighter.

Sir, if if you don't mind, Sarah, come up and maybe speak about the specifics of what that might look like for the academy.

Good morning.

I'm Sarah Grey Tack, physical therapist for Department of Safety, uh, really focused at the fire academy.

In 2024, we noticed that there was a huge need for a change in our physical training.

So we implemented the six-week EMS up front that allowed for a six-week ramp up of their physical fitness as they let into the academy.

So during that six weeks of EMS, they're really focused at training themselves physically, mentally preparing themselves to do the rigors of the job, but they're not on the drill ground in their gear every day.

And so that allowed for daily training where we could kind of ramp up their their uh, especially their VO2 max and their like lung capacity, so that as soon as they get onto the drill ground, we aren't seeing them fatigued, making mistakes, making physical blunders, and then hurting themselves and being excused from the academy.

Uh, you can see in 2024, we had a significant loss or reduction in our claim count.

So just the overall number of injuries that occurred during the academy went way down, and then we only had one lost work day for one individual, and that was because they had to go to the doctors.

So they missed their day.

So significant improvement just by taking six weeks and allowing them to ramp up to the physical load necessary.

Um, we're implementing in 2025 and expect the same results.

And just to give you a little bit of other preference, that coming from fire and having been a fire instructor at an academy, we usually anticipate that we would lose about 10% of our recruits through the process.

And our goal has always been to get 100% completion, and we're starting to see that, and that's the objective, right?

To get our officers and firefighters out on the streets after they complete academy.

All right, next slide.

Personal safety.

So this is a big one, obviously, coming from fire and emergency services.

Uh, this is not something that we've taken lightly.

Um, we've tried to work with or we do work hand in hand with risk management to establish guidebooks that help the employee go through the process of what it would be like if you had cancer, and then where are the resources that are available to you to make it as smooth as a transition as possible for them because it is a big stressor, right?

It's a big stressor for them, it's a big stressor for their family.

So we want to make sure that they have all the information that's available in a very easy format to navigate that system because it can be extremely complicated.

So we have done the cancer resource guidebook.

We're working on the heart resource guidebook, and that's a state-driven program.

And then our injury resource guidebook is our workers' comp process and then personal injury that is currently underway as well.

The other part of it too is though, when we look at and we help support obviously the fire department and police department will make their own decisions in partnership with risk management, but it's looking at the equipment and saying, is this the right stuff for you, right?

Is this gonna make the most sense and is it is it fiscally responsible?

And that's where I think they've the our organizations have done a tremendous job working with risk management and getting the right resources and equipment for their personnel.

And that's something I've been very proud of since I've come to Denver is to watch our chiefs make those proactive decisions.

And then on the bottom, just some of the things that we we still are trying to work through and work on, right?

I said pre-hire to retire, it's the support that they need afterwards, and what can we do to support our people after they leave?

As a retired firefighter, I can tell you my first six months post-retirement was miserable, right?

Trying to learn and how to navigate bad dreams, right?

Nightmares, things like that that were that you don't recognize initially until after you retire, and then next thing you know, it hits you.

And maybe it's because it's like cortisol dump is no longer there is you're starting to feel the repercussions from some of the stuff that's occurred from the job.

And so, how do we support our folks after they leave the profession?

Next slide, please.

All right.

The biggest, the biggest group that we that we'll talk about here is mental and emotional resiliency.

I can tell you from experience that uh both mentally and physically from the experience that I've gone through that this is probably the biggest component that is most beneficial to our employees.

When 2023 came along, we had an opportunity to apply for a DOLA grant, which we received funding for, and in doing so, um, we we uh implemented code four.

And the reason why that came up was we had an officer that was involved in a shooting, and I happened to be the first one to go to the hospital to meet the group there.

Nobody else from the city was there, and there was something I recognized immediately: was it would be really nice to have somebody who is a clinician because I'm not a clinician that understands the trauma that this person just experienced, but then the family came in, and then who supports them.

How do we get somebody there to immediately assist them that is a clinician through that process?

And that was the game changer that we truly implemented and actually has been way more effective than I even anticipated, which is where we started to extend it out with Den and some of our other partners, where we have individuals that are struggling emotionally and having a hard time coming back to work.

Like imagine a 911 dispatcher taking a rough call and then experiencing something similar in life, right?

And then having to come back and now work through that environment.

And then we now have a resource that can help sit side by side with them and get them back to the back to work versus losing that employee, right through through uh resignation because they just can't handle the profession.

So that was a big push for that service.

Not only that, but then they're able to do some uh wellness checks, provide some immediate um resource and and interference as far as um incidents debriefing and things like that.

So it's been it's actually worked out really well.

Um, and then they're an immediate resource for our our um command staff and things like that.

If there's a difficult situation that they need to navigate and help navigate.

Now we have a clinician that can provide that to them.

That was through the DOLA gram.

Nicoletti Flater is our contract that we have that's provided through budget, that provides individual counseling.

Our family counseling.

They do also uh serve as our peer support clinical supervisor, which is required.

Um, they do provide training and then are also like uh culturally competent.

In both instances, like Code 4 is doesn't do individual counseling, um but Nicoletti does.

Our goal is to make sure we have a resource available to our employees that are experiencing these events or traumatic events without having to wait extended periods of time.

So if you look at private insurance, you're looking at two to three months, we're looking at two to three weeks, right?

Or immediate, depending on the circumstance.

We still are involved with the Denver EAP.

Keep in mind that those are also CAPS counseling services.

They do have a limited incident response.

So when I say limited, we're looking at maybe 48 to 72 hours after a major event that they're able to get gathered in income and support, whereas we're looking at either immediate or one to two hours, right?

So when we said Denver Human Services, that was what they're looking for.

We have the resources to provide that to another city agency.

And then obviously financial resources, legal resources, and other things.

And then our last two that we have that our employees have access to are obviously our private insurance companies with Kaiser United Healthcare.

Next slide.

Additional program offerings and obviously our peer support through any of our agencies.

They all have their own groups.

They do receive their training and clinical supervision, as I had mentioned earlier.

The Denver Police Department has a reintegration program, which is supported through their own uh police officers in coordination with our clinicians to provide our folks an opportunity to reset and basically get ready to go back out of the street, especially after maybe an officer involved shooting.

The recess program is ran through our dedicated uh technician hap out at the fire academy, and what that serves as when we have a firefighter that might be struggling or dealing with a traumatic event, he's able to provide the resources needed to that employee and give them a reset before they get back out onto the street and back out onto a fire truck.

And then obviously like supervisor consultations, uh employee workplace support, and then as I mentioned previously, policy review and revision.

Next slide.

Okay, since the program's been around for a while as far as mental health resources go.

What we noticed since 2018, and we opened this up to Department of Safety employees, both civilian and uniformed.

We've seen almost a doubling in the number of clinical hours that our employees are using the services.

When we get through a couple more slides here, you'll see that the utilization rates have also gone up, and you'll also see that the um there's a percentage that we look at for how many of our employees are actually utilizing the services as a whole for each particular agency.

Um this is the counseling hours, and on the next slide, is our primary presenting issues.

So the feedback that we give from our clinicians, it doesn't go into details about the employees, this is all aggregate information, but these are the hot topics that they go to see our clinicians for.

So emotion, job stress, trauma, and relationships, and the relationships is usually family matters, job stress is obviously the job, anything going on uh within their workload, um, and then trauma is usually our PTSD claims or cases or some traumatic event that they may have been a part of, and any motion is is the kind of catch-all for those that are dealing with anxiety, depression, things like that.

Um it does go up and down quite a bit, um, but I think what to highlight 2020 and 20, that little hump there between 2020 and 2022, that was post and during COVID and George Floyd.

Um, and then we've seen still a steady increase after that, which which is a um obviously for us a concerning trend, right?

Um, so how do we mitigate some of those concerns and issues?

We've seen an increase in job stress for our employees, and then obviously there's a little bit more of a trauma increase.

And sometimes I think a lot of it that we've done is a lot of education to our employees and fire and police and sheriff, and hopefully they get to utilize and know that those services are there.

So we're seeing an increase.

Next slide.

We also have it broken down in usage per month from 2023 to current.

So when we look at each organization, uh fire has actually been steadily increasing, and we did make a change in 2022, where we opened up the services a little bit more for Nicoletti for them to use those services.

And we've and it's been a continued trend, which is good.

But six about six percent of the workforce from the fire department uses mental health services, which coming from fire and being an old school firefighter, it was unheard of.

So to see that they're actually using it is actually really good.

Denver police are one of our just because of their sheer size is one of our higher utilizers of the program.

They average about 152 clients, and when I say clients, that's the employee, spouse, and children, but heavily more on the employee themselves.

And then that's 8.3%, Denver Sheriff.

We've actually seen a decrease in their utilization.

I do know that a lot of it stems from uh cancellations.

We see it with the physical therapy program because of last minute cancellations and mandatory overtime.

Um but you have 31, and that is actually just client, that's just uh deputies.

I try to average it out with uh spouse and children, both of them came back zero.

Um so it's 31 deputies a month, and they average about 55 hours of counseling.

Uh then Denver 911 uh historically, and this is true here across the country, Denver 911 dispatchers or 911 dispatchers are the highest utilizers of mental health services.

They're about double what all the other first responders are.

And we actually reflect it here in Denver as well.

And then DOS, that's all of our other agencies, it's our office, the EDOS, it's our smaller teams, the set teams, things like that, are also uh have increased significantly over the last few years.

Um so we average about 21 employees.

Again, that was another group that spouse and children average zero, so that is actually just employees, and then we average about 42 hours a month of utilization.

Next slide.

And that is my presentation.

So any questions that you might have.

Um producer, if you don't mind pulling the slides down, I want to say director Masias and your team.

Thank you so much for what you provide.

Uh this information.

I mean, it you're providing data points.

Each of those data points, that's a person working for the city and their family, and uh, when you spoke to the the intentionality of the work done for Denver Fire, understanding acclimation for their loan capacity.

I mean, just the idea that you're thought of that, and uh you're providing that support so folks can be more successful.

I just as a chair just wanted to start out by saying thank you for um uh what you do and how you deliver.

Um we have several council members uh in the queue and councilmember Torres, I just wanted to do a quick check-in.

I know sometimes when you're virtual, it's hard to pop in and out, but curious if you had any questions, and then we have council members uh live here in the room with questions with questions.

Uh thank you so much, Councilmember Torres.

Let's start first with council member uh Gonzalez Gutierrez and Councilman and Councilmember Sawyer.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you so much for um making this happen.

I know we had started talking about this a few months, but months ago, I want to say, um, and so we we'd asked for this briefing to come to safety specifically for a couple of reasons.

I think there was one back in April, there was the decrease in hours available, and that kind of had I think kind of hit us.

Um, we weren't aware of that, and then we started, I think, all getting calls in our offices asking about that.

Um, so that was I think one of the reasons, and then the other were um I had heard from other council members concerns about the prevalence of officer suicides and in recent years amongst recruits or recent um academy graduates.

And so I really appreciate that you were able to to kind of like walk us through what is available, and so I will be talking more about the mental health side of things and emotional well-being.

I think the physical well-being, of course, is incredibly important.

Absolutely.

Like we want people to feel like they're in good condition to be able to do their jobs and not get hurt, right?

Um, and be able to do what they need for for people in our community.

Um, so a couple of the questions I have is is that like regarding the decrease, right?

In those hours available to folks, um, and and when you said that there's a decrease in the use, is there any correlation with that with the fact that there is just they they don't have the same amount of hours now available because of that decrease.

Um, so that's just I'll start there.

Yeah, so I can speak to that.

Uh that is if you want to pull up uh slide 11.

I think that might be what you're referring to as that last little drop there.

I think right now it's too soon to tell if that's if if there's a causation correlation there, right?

Of the decrease in services.

I can imagine at some point too, like there is that recognition when a service is no longer available, the need of the employee to want to use that service could disappear, right?

I'm very well aware of that.

Um, so that part of it is is concerning and it's something that we have we're keeping an eye on, but we're not certain if that's the cause of that, or are they utilizing some of our other services like Kaiser and United Healthcare to get support?

So if that makes sense, that would be their own insurance through their own insurance, yes, not what would be offered through the through the their departments safety, right?

And I do, if I can, I just want to add a little bit on that.

There, I think it's important to recognize the difference between the two, right?

So when you have Kaiser and United Healthcare Insurance, and I'm gonna speak truly from the heart, as far as somebody who who served as a firefighter, there is a significant difference between going to an individual counselor that is dealing with Kaiser or United Healthcare or any other private insurance agencies simply because they do not understand the work that we do.

I have had critical incident stress debriefings where literally we tell the story of what we experience and what we watched to happen and occur, and that count and the counselor that was there to support us starts crying, and I can tell you in one instance that the very next day she quit.

Yeah.

Because of what we're exposed to.

And so when we look at that aspect of stuff, we want to make sure that we have people that are culturally competent to provide those services to our people.

Um, and on top of that, for my own personal experiences, waiting until two to three months to get assistance for a very traumatic event is probably not beneficial to the person because now you're getting in two to three months of a wait time.

That's when PTSD starts to set in, right?

So if you can hit it up front, that's what we need to do.

So, I guess to that point, then are we revisiting this decrease that was put in place back in April?

I I found it very concerning, I just have to say, because knowing the amount of trauma and the things that all of our folks in our safety agencies go through and the type of work that they do.

I mean, I've done direct care, and I know like I know I still those things, those memories still live with me, right?

And so um, I just I'm just super concerned in hearing that and knowing from own experience, right?

Of like the behavioral health system with private insurance, it's not great.

The options that are available are not great, and the wait times are awful.

So, is there anything that you all are looking at to revisit those number of hours that are available?

And knowing that we know that not everybody, and this was the reason that was given, right?

Was that not everybody, the the the use wasn't high enough?

Um, and then there were some people who were maybe more high higher utilizers or more consistent utilizers, which isn't a bad thing.

You know, you're always gonna have that in a in a group of folks who some people are gonna take advantage of it more and need it, and it helps them, and it and I think it speaks to helping with retention and all of those things if people are accessing the help that they need.

Yeah, I can speak to that as well.

So, one of the things when we went through this process, we looked at the high utilizers, um, and and usually we're averaging probably about 20 folks a month that are high utilizers, which isn't a bad thing.

The design of the program was to make sure that we had availability of these services to the broader spectrum of our employees for high critical incidents, right?

High low frequency, high impact.

Um, and what we were experiencing was that we were having some backlog as far as giving these resources to everybody in an equitable fashion.

So we had to make some adjustments.

Now, my limiting factor is always gonna be budget, right?

So, how do we make the best with what we have with the budget I've been given?

And this is one of the end results of that.

Now, historically, and we've talked about this multiple times in our in our office.

What we've been able to do is rely on some of our other resources.

So either private donors, we've relied on grants, we've relied on either one of our insurance agencies helping pay and support some of these, our overages, and then our vacancy savings.

And that's how we've been able to continue to maintain the services that we had before.

Unfortunately, we're not at that point anymore, to be fully transparent.

Is there though the funding coming from the state of the what was it, 350 million that was um approved by voters to uh for funding for law enforcement?

Is this the Prop 130 proposition 130 money that came through?

Um, council member, it's a really great question and a great observation.

Um so the state is responsible for implementation of what that program will look like just for public awareness.

Um the voters approved an initiative to have dedicated funding set aside for certified peace officers across the state of Colorado.

So every agency certifies the number of budgeted peace officers, or I should say eligible peace officers, and then that agency is given an allocation of the funding.

Um so the State Department of Public Safety is currently setting the rules and the processes in place, and my last understanding was that in early 2026, we should hope to hear more with funding allocations being distributed maybe as early as end of 26 or hopefully at some point in 27.

However, I will say we are watching that very closely, but based on the implementation legislation that was passed during this last session, um, our understanding of that is that mental health and wellness specifically is not going to be an allowable source to be able to utilize those funds.

Emily, if you don't mind, our producer is fantastic.

But if you don't mind introducing yourself, I'm sorry.

I'm Emily Locke, legislation and policy director supporting the Department of Public Safety.

Thank you.

And my last question, Mr.

Chair, if that's okay.

Um, so my last question is going to the second part of the request for the briefing, which was around the concerns and prevalence of officer suicides, and then those that were maybe just coming out of academy or were recruits.

Just curious as far as if there is any data around those because it's very unfortunate that that is happening to folks who are in this line of work, and um my heart goes out to them, right?

Um, and to their families, and and so I think the concern is is you know, I know we nobody can really nobody can say what caused someone to do that, right?

We can't we can't we can't decide that for somebody, but I guess um are were there investigations um were there um yeah, investigations to find out like what led up to that moment um for that individual, and do we have any data that could be helpful because I think that could help us whether it's in the academy stage or during in the line of duty, like what are we missing that is not being provided, and why is this you know continuing to happen and how can we make sure we're providing the right kind of supports?

Um I can I don't know if you have anything you want to.

Um, so I can I can I don't know if there's been any investigation part of it or what those were related to with the employees.

Um we do average about three to four employees a year in the department of safety that die by suicide, not just with the police, but we're talking about fire and all of our other uh smaller groups.

Um so it's a prevalent issue, right?

Um, we we try to provide some resources and trainings to support the employees prior to anything like this, and we recognize that there's a fundamental issue that we that has come up, and even with my own personal life with my own one of my own children, um, is that we as an outcome from you now as a firefighter and as a dad.

One was is as a firefighter, we were never trained on what to expect or what to um how do you know what the signs are, right?

Historically, as a first responder, you're responding to the incident versus how do I navigate and pick up the signs that are going on?

I've had multiple friends that were firefighters that have died by suicide, and in any many of those incidences, after my own personal experience, I missed all of those previous signs that happened with those individuals.

Historically, we've had a cult.

Now I'm not speaking specifically here, I'm just speaking in general in first responder world.

Historically, there's always been when the person's performance starts to decrease on the job.

We hammer them, right?

There's better, you know, you gotta train harder, you gotta do better.

You know, there's disciplinary action where the reality is is I I kind of wish we took the approach of, are you okay?

What's going on?

What can I support you with?

What are your other things that we might need?

So we're trying to change that like that cultural shift to make it so it's a little bit more engaging with the employee to provide them some services and support.

One of the things I thought was really beneficial that the police department had done is having uh um uh their wellness coordinators housed at the academy um so that the recruits can come to them and talk to them and provide any thoughts or feedback.

Um, and that was that's that seemed to work really well.

Um so I always envision some of those things as like how do we provide and meet the employees where they're at, especially when they're new in their careers.

Fire academy does it now, and they have their resiliency coordinator housed at the academy.

We have our wellness coordinator at the sheriff's academy, right, to make sure that they support their employees and meet them where they're at.

Um but specific data as far as why or how, I don't I don't know.

That would be like a specific agency question.

Yeah, I think that might be something maybe we can do some follow-up on because you know, wanting like especially like you look at recruits or people that just came out of the academy, they that haven't even been exposed to maybe some traumatic experiences in there, and maybe there's some other something else going on for them that is outside of that, but is there something that's happening in that course, right?

Where I think we've all seen some of the reports that have come out about you know some of the the behaviors that have happened during academy with other recruits and officers, and so just thinking about those things, and so the culture shift I think is an incredibly important, um, because it not only it it deals with the internal, but it also translates into the external, right?

And how how um, you know, our officers, how our firefighters, how are you know, sheriff deputy, like how they're interacting with the public as well, right?

It kind of is helps with all of those things.

So thank you so much again um for for all of this.

And the last thing I'll say is like when you're talking about recognizing the signs, you know, there is the the um mental health first aid, right?

And and I don't know if um, you know, folks in safety department um get the opportunity to do those trainings, or you guys are engaged in that, but that might be a good thing to think about having implemented in the structure is um mental health first aid because that will help everybody to be able to recognize those signs and how to respond.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh thank you, council member uh council member Flynn.

Thank you, Sir Chair.

Um, I was going to go into the same areas of questioning, the councilman here, so I won't plow that same ground too much.

But uh I know that we had an officer suicide just recently, and when I saw the chart that said the drop in 25, we're still we have to analyze that for causation.

Um I hope that you're looking for a link between uh the officer suicides or the firefighter or the sheriff or whoever it is, and whether they try to avail themselves of services, but also whether it's in any way due to the decision to restrict the no access uh to the hours.

I'm gonna try to understand correctly that the way it was explained to me when a lot of us got calls on it, of course, uh that the capacity of the contract was being you're hitting the capacity, so we had to restrict for individuals.

So we didn't reduce the funding, but we reduced any particular individuals' access to it once they reached whatever was a dozen hours or was it a dozen hours?

It's 12 hours.

Um what what are the options for additional funding for that?

You mentioned private donations, grants.

Private donations, grants, uh, and which contract is it?

The that would be the Nickelodeon.

Okay.

So when you look at it from uh the the bigger picture spokes uh scope, there's a budgeted amount that we're allowed for that contract, right?

So we ran against it.

Yep.

Um so in order to get additional funding, you know.

The well is running dry, right?

We we've we've run up against private donor donors, foundations, uh grants.

Uh even the DOLA grant has started to decrease of as far as how much available funds are made um available to us.

Even the state's grant or uh I guess you can call it a grant.

They have their behavioral health trust for firefighters, that's been limited now and is close to expending all of their funds that they have available.

Um options are starting to decrease.

Um, you know, I don't know what the solution is other than you know, we recognize that there's more funding that needs to be available to this program, and you know, that's when the budget asks are made, you know.

That hopefully that they get approved in the future.

Um there other you mentioned private insurance, but not really the best alternative because it's not really a peer-to-peer sort of thing.

Yeah, so we've we've been fortunate in establishing a strong relationship with Kaiser and United Healthcare, and if there's been times where I'm under budget, those they have kicked in and helped them pay some of my invoices to support these programs to keep them running.

Um, but obviously I don't want to knock on their door every single day to say, hey, especially for a program uh that I believe and full and fullheartedly um should be a benefit that's available available to all of our employees.

Okay.

Um on slide seven, the uh physical therapy dumber fire accounting.

Could you help me better understand the uh disproportionate relationships among uh from year to year 2021, eight claims incurred total six hundred and three thousand dollars, but every other year, 30, 42 claims they're you know, 43,000 and 83,000, many, many more restricted duty days and lost work days.

I don't understand the 603,000.

Yeah, so that's only eight claims.

What is that?

So explain that.

Yeah, I can explain that.

Um, so usually what happens is that that is a one person that maybe experienced a very traumatic injury that um either they've been moved out of the academy and recycled for the next one because they're just not gonna be able to complete the academy, so they won't show up on here except their dollar cost.

So if we have somebody who says, like say has a torn uh peck muscle, right?

Their recovery time is gonna be extremely long.

So what happens is we recycle them to the next academy, but there's still an incurred cost that goes to them.

They might not show up on restricted duty days or lost days.

You've done a very good job avoiding any of it.

With 42 claims and only 83,000 in current costs.

So that's the framework of our our that's one heck of a couple of injuries there in 2021.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh thank you so much, uh, Councilmember Sawyer.

Um Council Mr.

Great, thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thanks, you guys.

Um, really appreciate this.

I I'm gonna ask a budget question for 2026, because I'm looking at schedule 100B just for council members.

I'm on page 86 of our budget book right now.

Um, I was just trying to give you a little I love the breadcrumbs, yeah.

You know, I mean uh um and I and so the the line item I'm looking at is mental health and programs division underneath public safety.

Is that your funding?

Yes, okay.

So your funding is going down 20% next year.

Okay, um, which is it looks like a lot, it's actually um about 150,000 dollars.

Can you tell me what that 150,000 cut looks like?

What are the implications of that $150,000 dollar cut?

The only thing I can think of is that there's a contract amount that we had because of uh the DOLA grant, which was $150,000.

So I don't know if that just is the fall off of that, and it's just I don't either.

I can find out, find out for sure.

Yeah, Emily, do you know?

Um offhand I do not, but council member will I will flag that for the executive director and we'll be prepared to answer that Tuesday at our budget hearing.

Yeah, that would be great, just because I'm curious whether I it's very concerning to hear that these um wells of uh potential other funding other than our general fund are um drying up.

Um we know money is short for lots of different reasons and all kinds of different places right now.

It's a really tough budget year.

Um, but I am curious what that 150 approximately 150,000 cut is um and whether that is uh something that is going that we're then going to see um you know the implications on that huge drop, whether that's gonna continue or not um as a result of it.

So if you I'm just gonna flag that for you, I don't I won't ask it again.

You guys can just tell me on Tuesday at the budget hearing.

Um, but that would be helpful for us to know.

Um and then in terms of the uh 2024 actuals and the 2025 appropriated.

So you had a significant jump in funding between 2024 and 2025 when we saw the success of the program.

Um, and I'm curious, but but we utilized up to that contract amount.

So I'm curious whether you're seeing in 2025 we are utilizing the full amount of that contract amount as well, because we only get to see appropriations uh in the budget, we don't get to see actuals except for the the year prior, right?

So the only numbers we actually have that are solid for us to go off of are the 2024 numbers.

So I'm kind of curious about current status.

Yeah, so the current status would show that we would be going slightly over budget.

We've tried to capture it now with these changes, but we were prior to that at the beginning of year continue it continued to be the same dollar amounts of previous year to go over budget.

So that's where all the other stuff kicked in and helped pay for and support the program.

But yes, yeah, we we are seeing we will be probably slightly over our actual or our budgeted.

Okay, really appreciate that.

Um that's really concerning.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Sawyer.

Uh Council President Pro Tem, Romero Campbell.

Um, thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I I actually my questions got answered.

So I will just say thank you for the presentation.

Um I appreciate it.

Thank you for the work that you do.

Um incredibly important, and making sure that um we have that mental health um support and services and ongoing.

I think there are also um additional areas of the graph that you had showed earlier of the usage.

I think it's something that we just need to monitor closely.

Um the only I think additional nuance to that, um, and a question that we had was are there specific jobs, are there specific um uh higher users of the resource?

So I know it was across the board for the mental health um supports and you know, X amount for, you know, per employee, but are there certain jobs, are there um categories that have a higher um higher user or frequency for that?

Yeah, unfortunately we don't go to that granular in the data, um, just to kind of go because once you do, you start to pinpoint like, oh, that was a chief, or that was right, and so we try to avoid that as much as possible to maintain their confidentiality.

So I don't know.

But I could say is just in general, overall higher utilizers tend to be your for your your ground level support personnel, right?

So the folks that are on the fire trucks, the folks that are out on the street and police cars and in our deputies that are in the jails versus say command staff, right?

Or support uh administration staff.

Okay, um, and then just one that I could probably well here on slide 12.

Um, there was one line that said relationship.

Is that what what is relationship mean?

That's usually spouse to spouse.

Yeah.

And what we find is um, and I can tell you that's for a fact because my relation with my wife, right?

Um, as a first responder, there are things that we get exposed to, and maybe how I come home and present myself causes a problem at home.

Right.

So, or we have a stressor that's already occurring at home, and then you go and experience that out on the street, and then you bring it back, and now there's a conflict, right?

I've just been grace that I have a wife that understood it and was you know married into it.

And um, but it's not to say that we haven't had to go to counseling and do those things to make sure that she's okay and I'm okay, right?

Like, and our relationship is strong.

So that's that's where that comes from.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Thank you for um sharing that as well.

Um I don't have any other questions.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you so much, Council President Pro Tem um Romero Campbell.

Um Director Masias, uh, and your team, thank you so much.

I was curious from the professionals that are sitting in the audience, if there's anything you wanted to add um to what was presented, any uh final points you want to provide, um, because I know that uh the work that you do is important.

So I'm wanted to give you an opportunity if you if there's anything else you wanted to add.

Um and if you don't mind introducing yourself and sharing which uh role that you play over here.

Um my name is Amy Camargo.

I'm one of the physical therapists with the Department of Safety, and I'm specifically at the downtown detention center.

Um so I kind of have uh people coming to me from all over the Department of Safety because I'm very centrally located, so kind of opens my door to that.

But I just wanted to add in that um although you know we've made all of these physical trends and and such, we have a very heavy um lean toward that mental health as well in our clinics.

He touched on it a little bit.

If we start touching people or they're getting treatment, they do start talking, and we do end up being that frontline.

Um, and so that mental health piece is so important to our department.

I just wanted to put that in on my personal side.

Um, we see it, we feel it, we we carry it, and then we ourselves need that unload as well.

So, thank you so much.

Well, with that, I just want to say to um Director Macius and team, thank you so much.

I can tell you from my family, my grandfather was the fire marshal on in a Virgin Islands where I grew up.

Um police officers and um uh in in my family um and the support that you provide and your team provide here in Denver is not something that's common.

Um it is not something that so many others uh I would say, whether it's in a metro area or throughout across the country receive, and so truly thank you and your teams for all that you do.

Um encouraging community members to um uh watch channel eight for the budget hearings uh starting next week on Tuesday at 9 a.m.

Um, the Department of Safety and each of the safety teams will be coming through throughout the day, and it'll be very important for us to look at um all the questions that the council members ask today to ensure that we are investing in the things that matters to the folks who are on the streets um uh serving and supporting us.

So thank you all.

Um we have only one item on consent, and with that, uh our meetings adjourned.

Thank you very much, and