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 the Health and Safety Committee for April 22nd.

My name is Darren Watson.

I'm honored to serve as the chair of this committee as well as the city council member representing all of the fine district nine.

We have two briefings today and uh one consent item.

But before we go to our items, uh why don't we go around the room and have introductions?

We'll start on our right.

Uh Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver's District Two.

Amanda Sawyer, District Five.

Paul Cashman.

South Denver District Six.

Good morning, everyone.

Serena Gonzalez Cut is one of your council members at large.

It appears we have uh several uh council members uh that are virtual.

Let's go first to Council President Pro Tem.

Uh good morning, Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver District 4.

And Tim, I'm just gonna wait a second to see if anyone else was joining in.

Perfect.

Well, I'll take uh a quick moment.

Uh today is uh administrative professionals day.

Um we don't have a ton of administrative professionals per se by title um within council, but um we have them throughout the city, and I want to say to all of the administrative professionals throughout the city, um I'm hoping you're enjoying your day.

I'm hoping your boss gives you a hug if you allow that, and um say thank you for all the good stuff that you do.

But for our council aides, I'll overlay uh make a council aid um professionals day to our council um aides.

Thank you so much for all the work you do throughout the city and county of Denver, do for our offices to my wonderful council members, council aides that are sitting over there.

Thank you for keeping um this train moving for.

So with that, I was pausing to see if anyone else was signing on online.

I see no one else, so our good friend Lores uh Meinhold.

Were you leaning in, sir, for uh well, I was just gonna throw in a happy earth day.

Yes, and thank thank the planet for taking such good care of us, and we'll try to return the favor a little bit better.

Words from the Gloriax of City Council.

That is that is awesome, and that is important.

And see, it's good for delays because I would like to welcome our uh good council member.

I think it's time you could still introduce.

Thank you, Jimmy Torres, West Denver.

So thank you everyone for being here, and uh we'll turn it over to our friend Lores Meinholf for the executive director for caring for Denver for your annual report.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Always appreciate the opportunity to be in front of all of you and answer any questions you have about caring for Denver.

This is our annual presentation.

We submitted to you all to the mayor's office to the city auditor our annual report on uh March 31st as required by the ordinance, but then we also like to follow up and just make sure that understand answer any questions.

And we've continued to evolve this presentation, sometimes based on questions that we've gotten from you.

So if there's something that's not in there that you'd like to see, just let us know.

So uh just our 2025 overview.

Uh we had uh received from the city 46,326,405.

Sorry, not enough coffee yet this morning to read big numbers.

Uh but we allocated about 43 million dollars.

Uh it's sort of uh shapes in our different funding areas, which is youth, innovative, community-centered solutions, and our alternatives to jail, which this year we changed the name to be care over incarceration.

Sometimes there was a lot of confusion around alternatives to jail and what that could be, but really wanting to center it around the mental health and substance misuse services.

Um but this is the five-year grant summary, how much uh we've given away in each of the areas.

Just a reminder, our first two years we actually uh shared money back with the city around facilities, so that's what that facilities number is.

And then uh what we have also received and awarded, we are about 96% awarded.

Meaning of all the dollars we've received, we've given out 96 or allocated 96 percent.

Sometimes they're multi-year, so we hold on to them until they're until they're dispersed.

Uh so 37,000 people have in Denver have received clinical services.

18,000 um are receiving services in a residential or outpatient setting.

Uh 27,000 engaged in groups or services with peer specialists, so train peer professionals that help people in the recovery and help them see possibility.

And 12 over 12,000 folks receiving training supervision to better support people with mental health or substance misuse needs.

In total we've touched 88,367 Denverites in 2025 with these services.

And the shaded areas means that it's heavier in those darker areas so mirroring the equity index a bit but most of our all of our grants are are many are citywide and we try to share with each city council member as we're meeting who are some of those nonprofits that are operating within your district and that can be a service to your community.

One of the shifts we're also making from this year to next as the city has while equity index is still an important one there's been more of a movement towards the nest neighborhoods so we'll be reporting more going forward on the nest neighborhoods as well to just be more in alignment with the city and how prioritizing different communities and and for councilman Gilmar this has always been an important question.

So we just wanted to create a slide on the systems change sort of what are we doing so while we were able to we made 88 grants in or funded 88 organizations last year it's important to fund those community supports but what are we doing to also change systems to improve systems and so Urban Peak we have just launched and piloted a neighborhood in Urban Peak so neighbor uh if if folks have not been to the mothership I would encourage that greatly but it's organized in neighborhoods and so now there is a recovery neighborhood called the SPARC.

It will serve up to 18 youth currently there are three youth in there as we've just launched it and we're going to be growing that so that they'll be getting 247 on site support for substance misuse and being able to transition into sort of more stability around that which will then ideally give them more stability in housing and other things.

So it's the first of its kind and so we're excited we have lifted up in our learning into what does it take to lift up to create this partnership between a community organization and a clinical provider on site what does that look like and then convening a group of folks to talk about what are some recommendations related to the other gaps in youth substance misuse that we need to really look at and hopefully by next year we will be able to share some of those findings with you on that.

With MSU we just refunded our behavioral health scholars program so 30 students who are getting their license their licensed clinical social workers but they need clinical hours in order to participate and a lot of our MSU students who reflect a lot of the community we're seeking to serve don't always have those resources to volunteer for those clinical hours so we're providing stipend dollars so that they can get their clinical hours in a Denver setting and then they stay a second year and we're finding many of them are actually being hired by those sites to stay on and really excited about the opportunity to serve their community in a way that they feel like they weren't necessarily saw providers that represented reflected them in that same way.

Denver Health a Thrive grant so this launched a peer specialist program within Denver Health it is the first time they've really been able to leverage peer specialists as part of their care provision.

They found it reduced wait times at Denver Health by 94% for mental health services.

So they are now it is becoming part of their core model of providing care.

And then capacity building we we shared with many of the city council members the capacity building report but helping nonprofits really strengthen their system so they can be more sustainable but what it has also shown is more uh they're able to serve more people and have better outcomes because of those capacity supports and then there are always questions and I know this is your following presentation so I won't go as deeply into this but there have been questions about what are we funding at the city level and so I just wanted to walk through that briefly again you're gonna hear some great presentations from some of the folks we're funding but through the Department of Public Health and Environment through the STAR program six million last year to support and grow those mental health and substance misuse services 638000 for the substance use navigation program that has since changed its name and I'm gonna forget what the new name is but really supporting that substance misuse outreach for co-responders and for the city and their support and then 5000 to establish a peer support hub so how we professionalize within the city peer specialists as well as create a peer apprenticeship program within the city to be able to produce more peer specialists for the city and for the community and then through the Department of Public Safety we uh and you're gonna hear through the LEED program adding a peer support specialist that's a program that Chris Richardson works with and then two 2.1 million for the co responder program again 247 coverage making sure there's a mental health provider with that law enforcement so we can divert both through the co responder and the STAR program as I look to Chris we're diverting more than 90%

And then through the Department of Public Safety, uh we uh and you're gonna hear through the LEED program, adding a peer support specialist.

That's a program that Chris Richardson works with, and then two 2.1 million for the co-responder program, again, 24-7 coverage, making sure there's a mental health provider with that law enforcement so we can divert both through the co-responder and the STAR program, as I look to Chris, we're diverting more than 90% of people still away from the legal system through both of those systems.

So it's a way to make sure, regardless of that level of call that 911 receives that if it's a mental health or substance misuse need, we're diverting them away from the legal system.

And then um a new program uh within 911 is to embed behavioral health clinicians within the call center so that they can both take calls and de-escalate themselves through the call center, but actually also make sure that those calls are adequately dispatched.

So right calls go to co-responders when they should and to star when they should, and not um defaulting to a law enforcement response if that's not appropriate.

And you're gonna hear about the amazing things they're doing uh next as well.

And so just wanted and then open it up to questions if there are some, but we tried to focus on where where the questions have gone before, and so if there's other pieces or parts that people want to talk to, we're happy to thank you so much, Lorez um and Kendall Asylum Partners sitting in the audience.

Thank you also for helping to prepare uh this presentation.

Um we have a queue that has started, and council members would like to join the queue, just uh raise your hand, send me an IM and I'll add you to the queue.

We'll start first with Councilmember Cashman, then Councilmember Torres.

Thank you, committee chairman.

Uh thank you, Loris.

Um, so I in the first slide where you were listing all the dollars, I believe it was like 79 million in community-centered solutions.

What is community-centered solutions?

No, no, that's a great question.

That's just one of our funding area, and so what we've heard from community a lot of times is what prevents me from getting or accessing care is that I don't feel safety trust or the navigation itself is too hard.

So, what we've been able to do is embed care within places that people already are where they feel safety and trust.

So it might look like the Center for African American Health bringing in uh therapists of color in their Northeast Community Center and providing services there, so that not everybody has to go to well power location or Denver Health, but can find where safety and trust is for them, or it might be uh in organizations Services de la RASA is one of our community providers as well, where they're serving sort of that birth to end of life age, um, lifespan local.

So Lydia Prado over at uh Blossom in Westwood is an important community setting where they're providing those services.

So it's it's about sometimes how do we create services where people already are because we found and have learned more that if they're accessible there, if they feel safety and trust, they're more likely to engage in them.

So it's just really more a setting and a population that we're serving not just youth, which for youth for us is zero to 26.

Um, and alternatives to jail or care over incarceration are those population that hit the legal system, but for our intervention, they would hit it, and then community-centered is pretty much everything else.

Gotcha, thank you for that.

Um so uh remind me since Karen for Denver has been uh established.

How much have you spent total?

We have spent in total uh the 246 million nine hundred and twenty-eight, eight hundred and eighty-three out of the 257 received.

So this is also a multi-year grant, so when we get something that's three-year, we book it then.

Sure, a bunch of dough.

Yeah.

Um my sense is that um it's still a challenge for the average person to find affordable mental health care is still a challenge for people uh uh struggling with addiction to find uh an affordable bed uh at a treatment facility.

So with us having spent about a quarter of a billion dollars, um I'm wondering what your sense is as far as the need that remains.

I mean, the need is ever growing.

So what I'll even say is as you create more accessible care, more people want to receive that care.

So sometimes you may not even see wait lists go down because as you create these safe spaces, more people are recognizing what their mental health and substance misuse needs.

What I'll say is the Colorado Health Access Survey that the Colorado Health Institute did showed that in Denver, the amount of people reporting bad mental health days has decreased.

So can we take sole credit for that?

By no means.

But I think there are improvements, but the world is ever changing at the same time.

So we have more federal implications, whether that be Demetade, whether that be around newcomers, immigrant communities, and safety, whether that is around our LGBTQI communities and safety needs grow out of that.

And so we are not separate from the world around us.

And so we have been able to build more accessible places for more people to access care.

Access to care is still the issue.

So it's it's something that we'll continue to work on and continue to figure it out.

The cost of health care sometimes for us is a little outside of our bucket because we're we're just creating spaces for people to go, and a lot of times it's either free or low cost.

That doesn't change that there's a lot of people in employed and with employer-based care have insurance that they may be able to connect to or not.

And so hopefully we're creating some community resources that will be also accessible for them.

But it's also people are trying to find the right place to go.

What fits for me, my identity, and so sometimes even that navigation can be challenging.

And so I'd say we're making progress and we'll continue to make progress.

And were we not here, I think things would be a lot worse.

I I agree.

I I agree.

I appreciate that evaluation.

I would just say that it as long as the statistics of the people in our jails having mental health and substance abuse problems would that would seem to be an indicator for us that we need to game up in the resources we're directing towards helping people with those struggles.

So thank you for what you and your no, I agree, and and to be honest, that's why we have this care over incarceration funding area for exactly that reason.

That's where some of our systems have not been able to connect to people, and our our uh jails and correction centers tend to be a large mental health provider.

So unless we can get them connected to care, and so that's taken some significant investments, and I again I think we're seeing progress.

There's still populations that are hard to serve.

Um, and that doesn't mean we walk away from that, but we have to figure out what that right solution is when we talk about competency and we talk about how do we restore that, how do we get them connected to care and stay in care?

And so what I'll say is we're not alone in that as a city or as a state, but I think what we are able to do is we have this dedicated fund so that we can pile it and try new things and figure out what works.

Again, we're one of the first to have this alternative response through STAR.

Not many communities have that, and so we were able to build that up in a way that didn't take away from other city resources.

And I think that's really gonna be some of the key to some of these solutions is how do we bring dollars to try something and continue to iterate it till we get to where we need to be.

Yeah, that difficult population.

We're gonna serve them one way or the other.

Correct.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh thank you so much, Councilmember Cashman, Councilmember Torres, and Council President Pratem Romero Campbell.

Well, I can welcome Council President Sandoval to the meeting.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um, thank you, Larez.

Um, and looking through your website on the awarded grants, and just want to um just make sure that I'm understanding if I look back at your awarded year, you may do you only do one or two-year awards or do you do longer?

Up to three.

Up to three.

So some of them I might need to go back and look at like 2024 awarded that might still be serving out.

Okay.

Um, so that was really helpful, I think, to understand like um where's all the funding going to in district three?

Um one of the curious ones for me was um Warren Village is mentioned as working exclusively in district three.

They don't have a location in three.

I know they have one in one, I know they have one in seven.

Just wondering, like, what is that programming exclusive to my council district, or is it utilizing their other locations?

You know, that's a great question, and I can find out that answer for you.

We rely on they say we're there serving.

Yeah, and so they identified that district.

Um, I know we fund uh a I think it's a Gilpin site and another site where we have actually embedded um mental health providers within there for both the parents and the youth.

And so it may be that uh there are some folks that have transitioned out that are still utilizing the services.

But let me get back to you on uh how exactly Warren Village is serving district three.

Okay, because that leads me to just your slide for around reach.

So if I'm understanding this, this is where your grantees are telling you these are the neighborhoods, or are they telling you these are the council districts that we're serving people who they live there or we operate there?

What does that mean?

It can be both.

Um, but I think what what usually so the where we fill the map is they tell us which districts or neighborhoods they are working in.

Um when we talk about who served, that's actually when they report back to us.

One of the new things we're actually working on is how do we, while we do it on the front end, how do we sort of on the back end sort of ask what zip codes.

Sometimes the challenge with zip codes is it doesn't perfectly align with city council districts or or neighborhoods, so but we'll do our best to also be able to then hopefully be able to say this is how many people were you know served.

Not everybody can report zip codes, whether it's you know, if somebody's unhoused, it's it's where they're located, or um, there may be other reasons why they can't report zip codes, but what we're gonna try to do is sort of just bring in some of that zip code data to correspond with like the 88,000.

Okay, okay.

Thank you for having me understand it a little bit more.

Um it does make me think a little bit about um I appreciate Nest, Nest has done a lot to bring attention to uh neighborhoods that have lacked investment in a variety of ways or another.

Um not every council district has a Nest neighborhood, so maybe it's like Nest Plus, right?

Because I think about like Council District One and you've got the quick news, and um you've got locations where uh people definitely need and don't already have like embedded access to uh some of the either the nonprofits because they've moved south or out of Denver.

Um, and that's kind of the migration that we've seen, even nonprofits or residents in my district as things get more expensive, move further south into councilman Flynn's district, councilwoman obvy that is this district, um, and with them go the nonprofits.

So some of that migration might kind of move folks around.

Yeah, and and what I'll say is we don't necessarily use the neighborhoods as a restrictor that we're only investing in nest neighborhoods.

What we're trying to do is just report how our investments are because we really look at who is the community they're seeking to serve, how are they best serving it, and what is the need in that community?

And so we do know that as housing prices and and the geography of Denver is changing, that it means neighborhoods are changing.

And so we use it more to report on than we use it as a deciding factor, and we're just trying to make sure how and at least show how we aligned with what are the priorities of the city, but we definitely recognize and we see that in the request, how the needs are changing and in conversations with city council members as well.

Okay.

Um do you think about like how you report out your impact in the future?

Um, because when I think about it, um I think there's an element to this that is responsiveness to like a clinical need in the moment.

Um, and then there is what's what's driving that um issue at its origin, right?

At its root cause, and um and whether you're you're kind of looking at kind of all ends of that spectrum and how and if that's something that can be like portrayed to us shown in an image around, we talk a lot about root causes, we talk a lot about um yes, having a therapist or counselor when somebody needs one.

Um so just wondering if you think about them in those kind of ranges.

We we think about them in that continuum of care, so we probably don't go all the way to root causes because we're about the provision of mental health and so there are definitely social needs associated with that, um, but we've tried to focus on what are those services from prevention to sort of high-end treatment intervention and where we live on the spectrum.

Some of that we look at where are other funders funding, whether that be the city, the state, or other foundations.

So there tends to be a lot of funders that fund in that prevention space, out of school activities, early childhood, and then we try to look at where are those gaps and where we can best meet those needs, but never losing sight of you know culturally what's important, um, neighborhood-wise, what's important, and sort of how do we support that and even connect folks to other funders as we think about that sort of full continuum.

I think what we're always trying to report back is what's the impact that we've had on mental health and substance misuse because those are the questions we get.

And so sometimes as we're more in that prevention space, it's harder to sort of point to what you've prevented or what you've done, and there's still a lot of need people see whether that's for our unhoused community or our youth that are struggling in gangs or or just having a sense of hopelessness, yeah, and how do we address that?

So we do things like the crisis text line that sort of it's it's earlier on, it might not be just right when they're in the moment, but if they're stressed, how do we give them tools and resources?

But we can, and we will add a sort of maybe what I'll say, a graphic or a map to show, and we can probably do that before next year, so I can try to.

So I'm like, we can uh but we'll create sort of a a figure that shows where our investments fall on that continuum before 2025.

Okay, all right.

Thank you so much.

No worries, thank you.

Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Councilman Rotors, Council President Protem for our panel.

Um thank you, Mr.

Chair, and thank you, Lorez, for the um for the presentation.

I had a few things, and maybe to build off of what you um had just stated.

I really am excited about the MSU um program and thinking about the behavioral um workforce pipeline.

Um, but to that point, also knowing that for younger younger students for schools for you know, early childhood education, it's embedded in the caregiver a lot of the first line uh mental health support that happens, and so I don't know if you were thinking about exploring kind of building that um additional support within those kind of programs at the at the college level.

We haven't so much at the college level, but I'll say in our youth funding where we're zero to 26, we look at not just the young person, but the and I'm not sure if I'm looking in the right place.

So I would exactly where you should.

Okay, good.

I was like, I I'm looking at you, but am I looking at you?

Uh we are looking at sort of the caregivers or what is their support.

So sometimes that is early childhood social emotional, sometimes that is the parents, sometimes that might be the grandparents or teachers, and how do we make sure they have the right supports?

So that usually falls within how are we supporting youth, and a lot of times it's those adults that are around the youth that support them.

And so we are funding that, but not necessarily as the pipeline, sort of in MSU.

We have looked at um or just recently funded City Year and uh there's another grant that I'm forgetting to do they have just started working to grow that sort of licensed clinical social worker plat uh pipeline and working with youth directly as well.

So we've made some of those investments.

We tend to be a little later on the pipeline.

Um of it is just how do we ensure it's Denver and how do we ensure that um we are growing uh still being such a new organization and having short-term grants, uh, how do we sort of make sure that we're sort of on that end side of the pipeline?

But happy to talk to you more about this too.

Yeah, well, I think about like the different um initiatives that we have.

So, you know, partnerships, and I know that you have you know, relationship or communication with like the Denver Preschool Program, but also Prosperity Denver Fund, and um they directly are working with you know our youngest ones in the city.

So um I would just encourage that sort of partnership because I think it often flies under the radar when I think about you know, the our kindergartners from pandemic are now in what sixth grade, they're in middle school, and that is middle school's hard enough, and then having you know, your a lot of your formative years and socialization has happened in connection.

Um they were they were pandemic babies.

So I just I'm I'm very mindful of that, and I also hear that a lot from our school partners and from people within district.

No, no, I'm and we are funding schools directly, especially a lot of the pathway schools, but uh some of the schools uh like the ROC that works with a couple programs to do that early childhood uh development with young uh young kids, uh sort of that uh you know two to six.

So it we and we do have regular conversations with both um Rebecca and Elsa to talk about that alignment where we are, what they're doing, and sort of how it can uh match up.

Great, and then just one last um comment about the Ness neighborhoods.

I think you know, um in my district in District 4, we have a Ness neighborhood, Kennedy that often goes and and the surrounding area, um, but also goes with um a tremendous amount of isolation and and just don't have the same level of support.

So, you know, um access and isolation compounded on being able to have those supports, um, and we don't have a lot of the nonprofits that um that serve that that serve our community.

So just again highlighting would really like to see um other ways that we're tracking or knowing that um all parts of our community are getting served.

No, no, very much appreciate that, and and again, we map everywhere we serve, and so um, and again, hopefully we're able to share, and I know we've had lots of conversations about this.

We will continue to work and try to help bring partners to communities, and so it you know, again, we can lift up those conversations again to make sure how do we leverage some of our connections with nonprofits and other communities to be able to serve uh your your community where there are less services as well.

Yeah, um, but thank you.

Um I appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Thank you, Council President Portem.

We have Councilmember Gonzalez Guterres and Councilmember Flynn.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um, thank you again for all of this.

I was trying to comb through the annual report as well.

Um I do have a question as far as like the report out of in even in the annual report, and maybe I just couldn't find it.

But I appreciate like the numbers of um the numbers that are called out as far as like the the data.

Um but I am also very curious is other points of data collected, even just like basic demographic data.

I know you're you're finding out from the grantees that like what communities they say they're serving, but just curious about demographic data, like who is actually getting access to the services.

We don't collect demographic data on the back end, not all of our grantees are comfortable sharing that.

We know generally who they may be serving and and how that, but sometimes if we can't consistently uh capture that across, um, to be perfectly honest, sometimes right now even zip codes is hard because people are afraid of how that may be used for a variety of things, and so um it's something that we think about a lot about how do we do that and show the the diversity of community that is being served.

Um we do capture um a bit about you know, are they BIPOC communities, LGBTQI communities, sort of some key communities we uh identified in our um community report that we presented last month?

So we'll be having more of that going forward based on sort of what what we sort of said community said was important in some of the population, so we'll have some more of that.

We track a little bit in schools unhoused, um, but it's more at a global grant level than at an individual service level.

I mean, I think it's it would still I guess I would still see it as it's aggregate data, yeah, right.

So we're not asking for names of people tied to um their background, right?

Like we're just it would be just to know because we know there are disparities in the current system and who is more at risk of all the different things.

How do we ensure that those populations are being served?

And so if that data exists or it's or I can't find it in annual report, please let me know.

It's it's likely not in the annual report.

Let me see what we can pull together on that based on what's reported.

I mean, I will just say in some of our communities, even if it's aggregated.

Um I get that.

Like I've worked in the field for a long time, and I totally get that.

Um, and I know that there are also ways, especially if we're talking about programs that have built that trust.

Um, you know, I don't know.

I think we can talk offline more about like ideas and ways that that information can't be captured.

And the reason why, again, is because of the overrepresentation of um certain members of our communities, like thinking of the justice system, right?

When we think of the youth system, the there is a huge overrepresentation of kids of color at Gillian, right?

Yeah, and so for years the system in Denver has been trying to figure out how do we get at that issue, how do we actually like incorporate practice that's going to you know decrease that number overall, but also decrease the number of kids of color that are winding up in that system, and what are we missing along that way?

And so I I think there is some importance to that, and there has to be a way that we can figure out how to capture it.

My last um question is I think what what could be helpful maybe in in upcoming reports is also because like looking at the the website, thank you, Councilman Todis for pointing that out.

Um, is having like a way for us to kind of see um kind of the buckets, right?

So not only I know there's the the um types of program that is is uh granted um that grants go towards, but then there's like some of it is city, right?

So some of it is like, for instance, um OSEI, the Office of Social Equity and Innovation received funds, so that's a government entity versus a community entity versus a school-based entity.

It would be great to see a breakdown to see like how many how much of the funds are going to like grassroots community organizations versus government entities versus partnership with like the school district.

Which isn't a bad thing, any of those things.

It just is helpful to kind of see that breakdown.

Yeah, so I I mean I will say when we think about the numbers, then again, the number of grants versus the dollars going to the institutions.

The number of grants probably more significantly represent um community-based organizations, like the Servicios de la Rasa, Centro Humanitario, um, or uh village exchange or um queer asterisks or uh you know, a whole host of organizations.

Um schools would probably be then a next bucket, mostly to be honest, pathway schools, yeah, and sort of um entry points or 5280 high school that's not a pathway, but uh a charter school.

Um the city, we always break that down.

Uh I'll say it's generally between 12% of the funds.

Um it can be anywhere from four to seven grants, depending on sort of how many come in, and then there's also the system, so like the Denver Health, the well power.

So we can break that down on that way.

I I think um to your first point, we can think about how we get to that population, and maybe it's by who they're they're serving.

It is what we look at when we're awarding a grant.

So, how embedded is second chance center within our community serving black and brown, primarily men coming out versus Dolores versus um, and so we look pretty intently about how they are the right organization to get at who our population is and how does it reflect that?

So for youth, it can be like fully liberated youth, it is um organizations rooted in the populations that need the the support, the organization that that you used to work for as well.

So we we look at that, even if we're not we you know, and again, I think it is one of those ones where we're trying to figure out how we if you can't get it consistently, it's also then not a real number, and so we want to be very careful about that.

But let us go back and look at how we can represent the populations being served.

But I will say uh a primary consideration is looking at what's the need, who's that organization that can best serve that need that reflects that need that has the trust and safety in community because without that trust safety, it doesn't matter who the provider is if if it doesn't really reflect the the community and the community needs where they feel like they can get the services in a way that isn't gonna impact them negatively.

Okay, thank you so much.

I'm happy to follow up with you.

Yeah, no, that'd be great.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Uh thank you, Councilmember.

Um Laura's we have uh two other council members in the queue and about seven minutes.

Okay.

So council member flint and then council president council president Sandoval, and we'll we'll take the time to get the questions asked and answered.

Um, as I'm trying to understand the chart, the five-year grant summary chart on the second slide, and I saw it in the annual report too.

Uh this doesn't include sales taxes collected in 2025.

Uh it does not.

So my question is how much sales tax was collected under this in 2025.

Sure.

We we just got the a draft reconciliation, so it's not even finally rec reconciled, but it's about uh 48 million.

The twice So it's about flat for yeah, it's been flat, it's been flat.

And uh just as a reminder, because the numbers don't get reconciled until this year, this is when we're giving them out because part of our contract requires we never overspend.

And so the last two years, it's been overestimated by about a million and a half.

This year, I think it's about six what we've received, so they pay us based on the estimates each month, and then they reconcile it, they give us a draft reconciliation in March, but then it's actually not truly reconciled until July of this year.

Okay, and so that's why we're giving away 25 dollars in 26, and that's why it's not reflected because we haven't given them out yet.

Sure, sure.

Yeah, but what's your fund balance?

Our fund balance uh I can get back to you that I mean that's where it's about what's that's your 10.6 on allocated.

Yes, that's what's unallocated, meaning um different from we uh have a little admin reserve, probably about uh eight to nine months, I think of admin reserves.

I don't drill down a little more on the map of the 2025 reach that you talked about a little earlier, but it looks like the dark teal, the darker teal and the lighter teal, and looks like my district has no teal.

Marley, but college view South Platte is very light, yet Cheesman Park.

Uh you know neighborhoods that are not quite as, in my view, as needy as college view uh are darker.

That's why these this map appears to be based on council district boundaries.

So is it that is it that way intentionally?

Is that why college view is not represented as a darker teal?

I mean, it's it's how we we try to represent it back to you all as city council districts um and sort of and mapped it to the inverted L.

So again, this is where people are are serving.

We do have um organizations that serve, but they may say citywide.

So pretty much every district is is represented by citywide, but then we we know like Camun is in your community, but there may not be as many, like this is a numbers too, so there may be more organizations serving the darker areas, but it but there are uh but I can get you the district and list of organizations specifically for you.

Thank you, that would appreciate that.

And then the last question I have is uh on the grants for 2025.

One of them is a grant to Caring for Denver Foundation for some innovative uh an innovation grant related to Urban Peak.

I'm curious why does the foundation actually provide services under grants you award yourself?

No, that's a great question.

So uh sometimes so for the innovative grant, that's the spark that I talked about launching the new neighborhood.

So what we did is brought in two evaluators for that program so that we would have an understanding of what it takes to lift that will be shared with anybody that wants to do it.

So it's not it's the evaluation is not forward-caring for Denver, but for the community at large.

And so this is a just a contract with two evaluators to work directly with Urban Peak on their programming and to lift it up.

They are not nonprofits, they are actually contractors, and so all we do, what it is is it's a scope of work that is paid for out of the grant dollars to work with Urban Peak.

But because they're not a nonprofit, it it is listed under caring for Denver.

It has to be listed under somebody, and so it's just listed under caring for Denver.

It stuck out for that reason.

No, no, no, I appreciate it.

I appreciate the question.

That's it's important.

So what the difference for us is if they were doing work directly for us for caring for Denver towards our admin, it would come out of our admin budget.

But if it's for the benefit of the larger community and information that'll be shared or helping uh organization lift up a program, then it then it comes out of grand dollars.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Uh thank you, Councilmember Flynn, Council President Sandoval and Councilmember Sawyer.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Um on the annual report, Red.

You have intended impact goals.

So I would I can't figure out how we know if the intended impact goals are reached or not, because I don't have any information for 2024.

So like I would thought like when the 2025 report came out, we would have information for 2024 on if the impact in the intended impacted um goals were met or not.

So how do we address that?

Sure.

Sure.

Um I think uh what we're reporting on in 2020, what we reported on in 2024 were the goals that were met, and sort of the outreach that happened.

Uh the same for 2025.

I think when we talk about improving mental health, reducing substance misuse, um we we are how we demonstrate that is sort of where uh what the sort of how these are outcome measures, like they receive clinical care, they received uh residential services or outpatient services, and so they did receive these.

There are improvements in mental health and substance misuse, but sometimes again these are multi-year grants, and it will also take some time to see some of that improvement.

So, what we always see is that engagement.

What we see is the connection to care, what we see is how long people stayed in care.

Some of those are sort of those proxy measures to mental health and substance misuse, because we're trying to show not just a hey, today somebody said their mental health is better, but how do we make this a lasting measure, a lasting impact?

And so it's some of those other factors that play into it to say it's not just today is better, but this is a long-term impact.

And so that's why we also put intended is because it's a multi-year grant, and we're gonna see each of those impacts every year.

And again, if we continue to fund them, they are being met.

That's why we then continue to fund them.

But the the challenge is because we're also not trying to duplicate numbers, it's why we can't do a three-year data report because they they've reported it in one year, and it might be sometimes the same people from last year to this year, and so we just it the data collection can make it a little hard, and that's why you have the yearly reports.

I don't know if I hopefully that was the answer to your question.

If not, also happy to spend more time and talk through it.

I I think it's just probably the way you have the report set up is we have you we say that you have to come and do a yearly report, but there's no stopping you from doing you've had this since 2019, so there's no stopping you from going back and saying for 2020, if we funded something in 2020 and then it ended in 2023.

Here's the metrics of return on success or return on investment.

So I know return on investment's hard because it's it it's people and it's um uh mental health and how do we measure that, but I just find it fascinating.

Like if I look at your annual report, a lot are several years, but a lot are just one year.

So why don't you report back out on the end of the year report from 2023 and say this was like the outcome and therefore we want to reinvest in them?

So I guess I just I think it's maybe your reporting that is like the interpretation of a year-in report, yeah.

We have to add an annual report 100%.

But I would hope that the annual report just had more substance in it.

Um instead of listing um grants and saying here's the the number because it it's just not matching up for me because if I look at your map on the presentation, I have the children's advocacy center in council district one in Sloan's Lake, and on your map, it's not even I have nothing in your map.

I have white, like I it looks like nobody's served in council district one.

Yeah, yeah, clearly, yeah, yeah.

It may be the ring, even the sort of light is a is a color and represents so every city council district has something, and so again, yes, we I don't think so.

If you go to if you go to map four, I don't see any color if the producer could pull up map four, um PowerPoint.

Yeah, no, no, I yeah, because you're um we we'll work on that and show so uh I think it's a a light color, it's not meant to be no color, and so we can we can work on that.

So apologies for that.

Um, but I also hear what you're saying about how do we how do we talk about maybe trends over more than one year in in the annual report?

Yeah, can if we're giving that much like to the children's advocacy center, children's advocacy center, uh half a million five hundred and eighty-seven thousand over two years.

What what's like yeah, the improve or maintain mental health 100% increase equity and mental health and substance misuse outcomes, but the children's advocacy centered, their mission is a bit different than that.

Um, their mission is to support children who are have been victims of crime.

So I don't quite understand how the reporting matches up with some of the missions of just the ones that I'm very familiar with.

Um, and like family star is that family star Montessori.

Um but yeah, I mean, what on what all the Denver Children's so this is their intended, so um that is the grant we funded in 2025, and some of that data, it's like who we made the the grant reports to, they may not show up in uh they'll show up a bit in this data, but the children's advocacy center actually works with all I don't think just justice involved or legally involved youth, but all youth, and so this is for their grant.

So what you are looking at is their grant application and what their intention was to do with their grant, different than a little bit what we reported on in terms of outcomes.

Um, but I hear you saying that uh we're trying to find that right balance because um when you're doing responsive grant making like we're doing, we're responding to what grantees are are saying they want to do in mental health or substance misuse, which means they're not always measuring the same thing, and so uh in past we've had conversations with council mentorers, and there can be too many numbers, and it gets a little confusing because it feels like there's a mismatch.

And so I think we're trying to strike the right balance, and maybe we went too far on this side and can think about what is what it may be like some cohort learning.

What have we learned across the five years of investments in peer specialists and promoterists and what can we lift up in terms of learning?

And so I think that was one of our plans actually for next year is to say, okay, across some of these, we're we're making a whole bunch of investments.

What have we learned and what do we know?

And that might give a better picture of it.

But we'll continue to talk because again, we're we we want to give the right balance, not too much, but but not too little as well.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then can I also get a list of um the ones that are specific to council district one?

Because it's really the the map is just really hard.

Um and like healing generations is in council district one, and I don't see it reflected on the map, even though it's all throughout the whole entire system, which I get like the day serve kids throughout.

Um, and I would just re-emphasize like as a somebody who's looking at the annual report.

If I if my constituents saw this annual report, my constituents would be say, okay, so what are the outcomes from 2024 to re-invest in these?

So just want to re-emphasize that.

I think that we I would love to help you on this report because it's just it's not meeting the mark for me.

Sure.

Um but I get what you're I get the the complexity behind it.

And and what I should also and Lorez, I apologize, we're gonna have to cut this.

Totally fine quick, but please make a quick.

Yeah, what I'll say is the 2025 reach is also grants we made in 2025.

So when we make grants to the Denver Healing Generation, they may have showed up in last year's map, or the if it's multi-year, so that's the other thing that I think we can improve in the map that is probably not being reflected as well.

Okay, okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Uh, look around the room, see if there's any further questions.

Thank you so much, Lores, for the presentation.

Look forward to your follow-through on questions that council members have asked for, and with that, we'll transition to our update on Denver's clinical response system.

Um we'll take a quick second, and Aaron and team, please come forward.

Oh, is it different?

Yes, all my stuff.

Yeah, sorry, my key.

I was like, where are my keys and my phone?

Jason, thank you for inviting me.

Good.

And whenever you are ready, Aaron, um is yours.

Thank you.

I was just saying, I've actually never sat here, somewhat nervous.

Uh we started a presentation.

Honest, we're honest, right?

Uh hi everyone, Erin Attensio, director of Roth's Recovery with the Mayor's Office.

Uh, we're really excited to come here and talk about some of the cool work we've been doing.

But before we jump in, I will let our team introduce themselves.

Uh Andrew Dameron, director of Denver 911.

Uh, Chris Richardson, director of crisis services, Denver, please.

Tristan Sanders, director of community behavioral health at GDPHE.

Um, so we are here to talk about some of the behavioral health interventions we're doing when someone is in need of help.

What does that look like on the back end and how we get services to that person?

And what we really want to highlight today is that our dedication to getting the right teams to the right people in a timely fashion.

And so we're gonna go through the different teams that we have, but also some of the innovations that we were able to bring online that uh Lorez has just alluded to.

Um, so when a community member is in need of help, there's kind of two ways that we can get someone to them.

One is for non-emergent needs, which is our 311.

Um, and we're not actually gonna talk about this today.

Cole Chandler will be in um community planning and housing committee on May 12th, and he is really gonna be um going through this.

I think it's titled street engagement operations.

Um, and so that will be the 311 street engagement team and how that system works.

Today we're really gonna look at the 911 portion that when someone does call Denver 911, what happens and how do we know who is going to be coming, like on the back end of what that triage looks like.

Um, so here's our new cascade of what we are able to do.

Some of this is old and some of this is gonna be new, and some of it is both.

Um, so Andrew will go through this more, but when someone calls and is expressing that there is a mental health or behavioral health emergency, they actually at that point can be directed to 988 with the hopes that they would be de-escalated.

Of course, there's a series of questions to ensure that there is safety and that we don't need to send someone out to do an assessment.

Um we now, thanks to Caring for Denver are able to have embedded clinicians at 911.

Um, so again, if there is an indication that the person is in need of support, they then can be transferred to a clinician to help decide again what kind of support would be best.

We have our our star team co-responder, and then still have lights and sirens with DPD uh Denver Police Department.

And with that, we will start with Andrew.

Sure.

Again, Andrew Dammer, director of Denver 911.

The main thing that is important to understand with what we're doing with these clinicians is Denver 911 has been doing a lot of work recently to really embrace our role within kind of intercept zero and one of SAMHSA sequential intercept model.

For anybody who's not familiar with that, it's kind of a way to look at the criminal justice system from the 911 call through release from jail and look for ways to create off-ramps out of the criminal justice system, particularly for folks who need help with mental health, behavioral health, substance misuse, resource needs, that sort of thing.

And 911 kind of sits right on the border between intercept zero, which is intercept zero is community resources are in place, and therefore a 911 call never needs to be made for somebody in mental health crisis.

911 and kind of uh community response programs like STAR kind of live within Intercept One.

That's where we can prevent somebody from having an interaction with law enforcement.

Um our role in that place is something that we are trying to really embrace and break down some of the barriers between, you know, it it what it used to be is if a call went into 911, that was your on-ramp into the criminal justice system, full stop.

And what we're trying to do is really kind of shift that in partnership with the rest of the city.

So we didn't want to create a system where we were still operating in a silo.

So the embedded clinicians at 911 are going to be providing kind of that trauma-informed clinical perspective from call intake and then supporting that down the line.

So they're going to have access to the same systems that host are using, that Servicios de la Raza is using, that STAR and DDPHE are going to be leveraging.

It's it's going to be uh fully integrated into the larger kind of process.

Um they'll be able to resolve some calls over the phone and then also work with first responders.

So if a call does, you know, uh require a police response, but it's somebody that we've interacted with in the past.

We can have that clinician reach out to the first responder and say, hey, we're actually pretty familiar with Andrew, and he might really benefit from being taken to the solution center or something along those lines.

Um really trying to kind of uh make sure that information is being disseminated when appropriate as as thoroughly as possible.

Go ahead.

Um Caring for Denver granted us 385,000 for three clinicians over three years.

Um this is going to kind of operate as a as a pilot to see how we can kind of really um integrate this into the correct in real time, that number.

You said three and seven.

Did I say three?

Sorry.

I I saw three afterwards, and my mind.

Okay, so seven or five.

Sorry.

Yes.

Um and then they'll be working staggering shifts.

Uh, you know, with only three people, we're not gonna be able to have 24-7 coverage, uh, but we're gonna try and get as close as we possibly can.

Um and again, hoping to have more calls resolved.

You know, right now, there are a whole host of calls that uh sit on hold waiting for star to come available in order to go.

So uh we'll have a clinician who will be able to kind of reach out to the reporting party and say, hey, can I help resolve this?

Um, because we've even found from working with TANDIS and the STAR team that there are many calls that we dispatch the vans to that they're able to resolve over the phone that don't necessarily need an in-person response.

But we don't know.

We're 911.

We tell people and they go.

So that's where having a professional in the building is gonna be really, really helpful.

Um that's me.

Uh great.

So I'll talk a little bit about STAR and where it sits within the system, and first just say, you know, all of these programs are supported by Caring for Denver.

Obviously, STAR has significant support from Caring for Denver for both response and the follow-up services that we provide.

Uh this really is the system.

So we may have each come in front of you and said, we're gonna talk about our system, but it was really just our part of the system.

It's really exciting that we actually can all be here together and talk about this as the system that we're putting out there for the city.

Um STAR, as you know, is a civilian response.

It pairs a behavioral health clinician with an EMT or paramedic uh to respond to certain 911 calls.

Um it's really you know intended to not be uh allowing calls to escalate to a police response and other types of response.

And so, you know, we've always set the right response from the right team at the right time.

And STAR fits in that category, as Andrew said, just above what 911 may be able to do in-house now.

And so we are providing you know person-centric trauma-informed response options for folks and really being able to get them to whatever that next step is that's gonna make the most sense for them.

That might be follow-up services from our partners at Servicius and the network that they support.

That might be other city facilities like the behavioral health solution center andor Denver Care's, et cetera.

There's a number of places that they can take folks.

Um Star operates seven days a week from 6 a.m.

to 10 p.m.

There's up to van five vans in service at any given time.

It varies uh by day, and as I mentioned, people are connected to follow-up care and case management through Servisios.

And we are very excited about the opportunity to be hiring directly the clinician portion of the van response, so that we are actually in an integrated EMR, like Andrew was mentioning with everybody that's working across this system.

We're able to directly triage calls to STAR in that manner and able to follow up uh care to folks appropriately and see that in our own system and track that in a number of ways that we haven't been able to do before.

So I think we have a big opportunity with some of the changes operationally that are that are coming online this year.

Uh the budget, this is pretty confusing.

Um, but if you want to dive into it, we we can maybe do a briefing offline that might be more beneficial.

Um, but effectively, you know, there's dollars that go to the clinician portion of the van response, there's dollars that go to the EMT and paramedic portion of that, and then there's dollars that go to the follow-up services from Servicius Dilanasa this year.

Our contracts were up for the five-year run, and we are bidding, so we're we're actually, I think we're still in an RFP process related to the EMT paramedic portion of the vans.

And then we are working very closely with Wellpower about a transition in us hiring uh those clinicians in-house over the course of 26.

All of that should be in place uh ideally by middle of the year, but realistically, probably in the fall.

Um, so we'll say August ish, uh, September.

And uh really what's important is that you know the level of service is gonna remain, you know, seven days a week, 6 a.m.

to 10 p.m., roughly the same number of vans.

We think that there's gonna be a lot of operational efficiency that we're gonna be able to see uh by having clinicians as staff in our department that we'll be able to actually keep going forward.

Uh which brings it to me with the co-responder program.

Um we are proudly celebrating our 10 year of being a uh clinical unit within the deep Denver Police Department.

Um we started out in 2016 with officers being able to engage uh community members that are coming across law enforcement um with behavioral health issues and how do we uh get those individuals not only um with de-escalation, crisis services, connection support, but then also how do we get those individuals to long-term care.

Um can't believe it's been 10 years.

I was young back then.

But naturally we progress through that and through the funds related to caring for Denver to be able to be part of the sheriff's department now related to uh evictions and how do we manage situations related with that.

Uh, not only that, but hoarding situations, um things that come across that are the sheriff's department with the civil side of we want to best solve and how do we come up with a better uh uh game plan attached to that.

And they're a lovely fire department.

They go on calls that don't have police on them, but they consistently have behavioral health needs, so we consistently see our team doing amazing work alongside theirs.

They do not get a right on the fire uh engine, but they do the follow-up care attached with it.

Um we approach everything with the trauma-informed lens.

I think we have come so far in 10 years with being able to uh not only partner alongside law enforcement and be able to give uh the citizens of Denver the right response in the most appropriate way with the most trauma-informed lens that we can, but actually helped educate the law enforcement partner along the way as well.

Um 2016, it was very much a this is how we do our approach, this is how clinicians do, and now it's officers learning some of our lingo, our approaches that aren't taught in the academy, but if actually just through riding with a clinician for 10 hours a day, you just kind of through osmosis learn some of the softer skills, the different approaches that there isn't necessarily one way to deal with every situation, that there can be a whole different way you can lean on your partner, or you can be a little vulnerable in that situation and show a citizen uh a different side of the law enforcement and be that partnership attached to that, all with the goal of being able to mitigate the crisis.

Um, part of uh which I love about STAR and uh the Serviceo connection and that whole partnership with the uh the whole team is we have our OCCs, so every behavioral health thing has a um next step, next level.

What can we do to get this person that game plan a crisis situation to whatever service they may need?

These ladies are the most phenomenal resource connectors in the entire world.

They bring things up to me I have never heard of in our city that I'm like, I need to go meet these uh organizations.

Um they are really good, they're really gritty, and it's not just about the behavioral health side or not pushing kind of that therapy is the only option.

It is do we need peers?

Do we need support?

Do we need community connection?

Sometimes it is faith-based stuff that they're saying, I know my community, I know this place is where it's gonna be a great opportunity, and letting that client lead that situation and being the director of kind of what the recovery is.

Um, last year of Caring for Denver uh funded the co-responder program at 20 uh 2.1 million dollars.

Um, we're currently in the cycle right now to be uh reapplying for those funds for uh 2627.

And then uh, like I said, we are averaging about uh on year-to-year uh less than 2% arrest or citation.

Uh, individuals that do get arrested or cited, um, we don't stop there.

We are connecting with our partners in the jail.

We want those individuals when they return back to the community to have a re-entry plan that actually is supported uh with whatever took place on that front end.

Um shocker, not a shocker, probably.

Um, if you have a clinician in a car with an officer, you get less complaints.

I think there's just a different approach with how that comes across.

Um, we have um almost no IA complaints related to an officer uh clinician partnership.

Um, 11% in mental health holds, we do follow up with those individuals at the hospital come up with the best game plan with hospital systems or even providers that might take those individuals um into care after the fact.

And again, April 1st, 10-year anniversary, April Fool's Day.

Who would have um okay?

And so with that, it's just gonna loop back to kind of the beginning.

And there are some areas that we've seen that I want to acknowledge.

So there actually should be arrows from the 911 clinicians also up to behavioral health services, and that was a miss on my part.

I apologize.

Um, like Andrew said earlier, we really use a sequential intercept model.

It's the foundation of how we built the roads to recovery system, and we really try and use this in the systems that we're building moving forward.

At every point we come across someone, we want to connect them with care before we go on to whatever that next intervention is, ensuring that they have that right person, that right approach.

Um when they go, the goal is to de-escalate and to ensure the person can stay in that place, whether that's their home or the environment that they care about, but there are gonna be times that they either want or need a connection to another service.

Um, the teams do have access to the roads to recovery system of care.

We are bringing that on intentionally because it actually has a lot of operational impacts and how we make sure people are getting paid in the coordination is going the right way.

Um, and then STAR has Servicios de la RASA as their backup for that, um, that backup as their referral for the programs and stability supports from there.

Um and with that, did I miss anything, team from this one?

Okay.

And with that, we're happy to answer any questions.

That is awesome, Aaron.

Thank you all and your teams.

What amazing work you do and seeing this coordinated approach.

I think this is a fantastic way to do presentations, but let's keep doing it that way.

I just think it's amazing the work that you all do.

And so we have a cue with Star First Wood Council Member Sawyer.

Thanks, Mr.

Chair.

Thanks, you guys.

Um having sat here for seven years watching the all of these programs kind of um function in silos separately.

Like I have to just say it's really exciting to see things finally integrated and coming together because I think that was the huge gap.

Um so I am very excited about that.

I am a little nervous about you bringing clinicians in-house.

So and just because I'm I'm not a hundred percent sure that that's what the city of Denver should be doing, right?

Like, we are a city, um, we are not clinicians, and so can you kind of walk me through the thought process there and like calm me down that this is gonna be okay?

Because it just doesn't feel okay right now.

Sure.

Um there's a number of things I'll point to, and I'd welcome others that have been a part of these conversations to chime in as well.

Um, so first of all, we've had that discussion.

So, what should uh city government do?

And where what should they not do?

And so, like, we've had many internal discussions about this.

We've had it out over probably multiple years at this point.

Um, what I would say is that a lot of the clinical services that we do offer have come a long way, even just in the last two years.

So we now have clinical licensed staff uh already in our office.

We provide case management directly through our office.

There's a number of things that we are doing that I would say are are on some cases filling gaps, and in other places capitalizing on opportunities.

And so where we see a large system like STAR, where you have you know, triage from 911, you have follow-up care from community partners, you have a hospital partner providing EMT paramedics, and then a community mental health partner providing clinicians.

There's about no less than seven different systems that all have to work, talk to each other, coordinate, and make sure that the experience for that client is a good one.

And it there's so many places where it falls short.

And so I think the opportunity that we're looking to seize on is really that if we can all be in the same system, the same EMR, the same tracking system for an individual, we will have line of sight from 911 call all the way through to what care happens on the back end, and we will know in almost in real time, like when something's falling short, when we might need to step back in, when we might need to ratchet up to a different type of team or you know, service, or ratchet down.

And so I think that opportunity alone is a huge one.

And then I think there's just operational efficiencies that we're gonna be able to achieve by saying, you know, we want to make sure that we'll like we've had this debate about star being 24-7 for a long time.

We've had this debate about what is the right number of hours, what is the right number of vans?

I think we will have lots more opportunity to actually influence what we want to see in that, not having a contract that we have to negotiate and then execute a year out and then hold accountable through a contracting process.

We'll be able to more directly influence what those actual operations look like.

And so I think through those few like a couple of really important opportunities, it's it's worth doing and it's worth doing now, particularly as we're at the point where those contracts were coming up.

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, the other thing that I will say is that uh we have spent a great deal of time looking at uh cities that have similar programs to STAR.

So Seattle has their care program, Durham, North Carolina has Heart, Albuquerque has their uh department of community safety, and the commonality with these programs is that their responder staff are city employees, and what we have seen is um a growing gap in efficiency and ability to respond effectively within the community, and so we're we're kind of you know, Denver's star program was um a leader in this space, right?

And I actually saw a presentation not that long ago where they were talking about alternative response programs around the country, and there's this line, and you have CAHOOTS and Eugene, and then this line, and then there's Denver Star, and then boom, goes like this.

And at the same time, we've fallen behind a lot of our peers in other cities, and inefficiencies is one of the big things.

So I can I can say from working with them that this is this is a direct solution to a lot of those challenges.

And there's been a lot of uh fact-finding also with the BHA who oversees there, the state co-responder, and saying, like, is there a pathway that you've seen trends in, and we've seen a lot of the trends that were um contracted clinical teams out in the community all coming coming into the city.

Um we have Inklewood uh or Glendale, um Lafayette, Adams, Arvada, uh Commer City, um, that all are saying we want the clinicians in house because it allows us more locus of control to say when we need to turn on a dime or shift immediately.

The ability to do that and carry out is highly we can do it day one.

Um and then BHA is also kind of saying it's to each jurisdiction's kind of determination how they want to be able to approach that, and we support it, and um there isn't you know the the goal is efficiency and effectiveness, and how do we do that in the best way we possibly can I'll add one more thing.

So, you know, a lot of what we look at in the data for star is like number of calls responded to, how many are star eligible, when like what is the response times, etc.

And you know, those are metrics that I think we're gonna be really keen on, and we're gonna I I didn't mention this in the presentation, but we're gonna be we're being working on a program evaluation for star.

We would like to have a public-facing dashboard, much like many of the programs that we run, that'll be available.

We'll have effectively real-time data that'll be feeding into that.

And what I would say to you is if you're uncomfortable now, I can understand that.

Let's see what it's like once we're doing this, and please give us the opportunity to check in.

Uh, we've said this to our budget partners as well, like we're hiring folks, but it's gonna be in a limited fashion, and we're gonna prove that it's the right thing to do.

So in reverse if we have to, but that's not the end.

Not the intent.

I will just say I I really appreciate that.

It's clear that you guys have been really thoughtful about making this decision, and I I mean, we have worked together a long time.

Like, I know exactly what you guys are thinking, and I'm hesitantly willing to support you because um you are telling me that you have thought this through really really carefully.

I'm not sold.

I am I am really uncomfortable with the idea of this because I have worked in this city for seven years, and I have seen a lot of spaces where we have tried to garner control instead of just being good partners, and it hasn't worked out very well.

So I'm really I'm really nervous about this, but um, you know, it's a it's an operational decision, it's not a council decision, so I can't wait to hear more.

Will you come back in, update us?

Do we have like a metric time after this change when you guys will be able to come and like reassure me?

Yeah, I I don't know what the right time frame for that would be.

I'm hoping it's before July of 2027.

But uh because I won't be here.

Well, we'll make sure it's I mean, like I said, if we can get a public-facing dashboard up, we can have these metrics available.

It's something we can look at regularly.

It doesn't have to be let's come back in six months and give you all the information then.

So I would welcome the opportunity to you know schedule briefings along the way and even take a look at the data and see how it's going as we roll this out.

Okay.

It's gonna take us a minute to hire folks and like get folks trained, get folks operational.

Like I said, hopefully August, fall, that's what we're committing to.

And it'll take a minute for the data to then reflect uh what that change actually looked like.

It looks like a lot of minutes.

Okay, I appreciate it.

Um second question is around domestic violence and our co-responder program.

So when I did my ride along a million years ago with Denver Police Department, we literally went from like drug overdose to drug overdose to drug overdose to drug overdose.

This was in when I was running for office in 2018, right?

And it was like a Friday afternoon, it was crazy.

And like, but when you know, in the in the sort of seven years, eight years since then, what I'm what I keep hearing significant concern about from DPD, and what I keep like seeing it reflected in our crime statistic numbers is a huge massive uptick in domestic violence.

So that's our co-responder space.

Um it has been a really successful program, and if the public does not know our what our co-responders do, is it's a mental health clinician and a police officer who go out and assess the situation, which is why they usually are responding to domestic violence cases to make a determination of whether this is something that is requires a police response or something that requires a mental health care responder.

So as the number of domestic violence cases have grown, has our program grown with it?

Um yes, I would say up till about probably 22.

Um, we're continuing to expand and grow, and um I think with uh shifting landscapes of funding, we have lost funding related to state uh that historically we had, so we lost that, so we had to reduce numbers.

Um I think you know, we're all scrounging like this program.

We should have a clinician in every officer's vehicle, in my opinion.

Um, and I think as we continue to like look at the future, it's finding the finances to be able to do that, the sustainable ones.

Um, we don't want to live on grant funding forever.

We want to actually be a sustainable member of like a general fund, and that's gonna continue to be something we push for.

But yes, you're right, we do not have enough clinicians um going on those kind of calls as much as we would like.

Yeah, I really appreciate that.

And I will just say um that this is one of my major concerns.

I feel it, and uh I feel like this is the kind of space where the mayor's office administration's myopic view of homelessness and dumping all of our money there instead of um investing in some of the incredibly important things like our co-responder program that we have seen.

Um, that's where we're cutting dollars, but we're continuing to keep money, you know, in um our housing program at extraordinary rates, and what it has done is lead to a situation like this where you don't have enough clinicians to respond, um, which means cops are going out instead of co-responders, um, which escalates the situation, or no one calls them for help because they don't want a police officer there, and then uh the situation escalates even more, right?

So I'm I'm really concerned about this because I feel like this is a really clear example of a space where um some of the administration's financial decisions have led us to a space that has made our city less safe and our residents less supported.

So um I really appreciate what you do.

I think this is a big concern for me, and I I just appreciate um the conversation that we're having.

Thanks.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawyer, Councilmember Torres, and Council Member Gonzalez Gutierrez.

Thank you.

That is the same line of questioning that I had.

I'm looking at your heat map um on slide 15.

I for some reason it was in my mind that we had one, maybe this is tell me if I'm wrong.

One co-responder per police district.

Uh we usually have two assigned to each district, uh, front end, half end, back end of the week.

Okay.

And so um, is that the and they're in the same vehicle all day for that shift?

How many vehicles might be out in a given time?

And then how does it get determined which um uh officer they're paired with?

Um it's usually on any given day at six.

Uh sometimes we might have an overlap on like a Wednesday or something, uh, where like the teams kind of overlap, so we might have more out.

Um roll call basically, it used to be each jurisdiction each jurisdiction kind of does it their own way of like is it one officer to rides with one clinician for the rest of eternity?

Um we're really intentional that when we go to roll call, every officer has the ability to actually be part of a clinical team.

We don't want one officer saying, I don't want to ever do mental health instead, and this team can just deal with it all.

We want everyone to have to ride.

Our clinicians are very good at new person in the room, I'm riding with you today, because you're gonna get to learn what we do and how to utilize us.

Um and so those individuals, when they pair up, they're in that car, clinicians uh the clinical team, and then 911 is part of that discussion of being able to, as needed, dispatch that team to the appropriate situation.

They also have the cue that they can cherry pick from to say, hey, actually, this one seems like more up my alley, it's more acute, we need to get there right now.

And so I think there's a lot more freedom than we had in 2016 when that was not something we did.

Um, there's a lot more trust and uh garnered relationship with those uh systems.

Okay, and is there a comparison of either either shift outcomes or um uh kind of case uh results between vehicles that did not have a co-responder and vehicles that did?

No, not currently, but that is a fantastic thought.

Yes, I love that.

We'll we'll look into that for sure.

Okay, very thank you so much.

And I'll just throw one more thing out there too.

Another initiative that we have at 911 is we are uh uh building out a new dispatch sort of um job class, not job class, but essentially a new position that is going to be focused on STAR, uh possibly co-responders, some of these other non-law enforcement teams, because right now, as you all may or may not be aware, our star resources are being dispatched by the police dispatchers, right?

So they've got their huge list of calls that where they're trying to assign officers and what have you, and within that list are the stall star calls for service.

So, what we're looking to do is offload all of that onto a single dispatcher who can just focus on the star calls for service, triage them a little more effectively, prioritize them a little more effectively, and so that kind of also plays into this so that we are utilizing resources more efficiently.

Okay, thank you so much.

And I know our officers just go through uh a zillion hours of training and um there's um uh a future um where we don't have behavioral health experts who are also um law enforcement uh personnel, or there's some kind of um I don't know, equity and education and background and specialization in some way.

So I don't always feel like these are two different types of people.

I think um there is a future where we have more folks out on the street who have a background um in behavioral health and clinical health, and and just seeing what we're seeing every day um uh makes me feel that way.

I think even when I look at you know the the fire department responding to more other calls than fires, um like we just we ask our first responders to respond to whatever is out there, and it just feels like it's this growing um kind of bolus of um uh behavioral health calls and um kind of crisis intervention.

So thank you so much for all of the roles that you're playing and working together.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Torres, Councilmember Gonzalez Guterres and then Councilmember Flynn.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um thank you guys for for this presentation.

Um so a couple of things.

One, um, just to be clear, we currently have employees before this that are licensed clinicians, right?

Like we have LCSW's licensed clinician, clinical social workers that work for Denver Human Services.

Um currently, they may not they may practice on their own, or they may uh they don't necessarily practice in that capacity in their job, but they are licensed clinical um workers and they can actually do therapy if if they needed to or whatever.

Um they have the training, right?

Okay, you're nodding your heads.

Um they're also in the jail as well.

So this isn't a new service, it's just a more robust service.

Yeah, so I just want to like be clear on that.

Like this isn't necessarily a new thing.

I I like the fact that you're trying to um address that kind of continuity of care situation by having these folks in-house.

I would say like what gives me pause um on some of that is having you know, then be city employees and knowing that things can change because of political decisions, and that's a reality.

We've seen that happen in a variety of ways.

Um it's been mentioned today with you know some of the specific initiatives and how um there's more attention paid to certain things, and sometimes other things fall by the wayside.

And the fact that this is all grant funded right now is highly concerning, right?

If we're going to implement programming and we see the effectiveness and hopefully we we see what those outcomes are, then it is okay now.

Um if we're able to then turn that into like a general fund um, you know, a part a part of our city programming.

I think that's speaks to a lot of the conversations we have around how do we properly allocate our dollars, our general friend dollars, and that it all when we talk about safety, it's not just one bucket.

There's many buckets that can address that need.

Um my one question was going to that system overview slide, um, slide 17.

There was like this bar, and I just I was just trying to better understand that flow and what that all means, because you have like pointing to behavioral health services supports, de-escalation, and then divert from jail.

Can you just do a like a really quick just walk through of like what those arrows all mean and how that works?

Yeah, I I just want to acknowledge that we built the slide and then we have had a lot of feedback around like that slide is really bad.

So we are actively I understand.

But we're we uh someone is actively trying to fix it so that it is more user-friendly.

But Andrew, I think you don't really get over.

Yeah, I think I think if you look at it, it it kind of as it moves to the right, it increases in safety acuity, right?

Okay, so so if you kind of look at it from that from that perspective, if it's something that we can hand off to 988 and just give it to them, great, all the way up to no, we need arms law enforcement response.

Okay.

But then so then the de-escalation, like, is there a connection between the behavioral health services and stuff stability supports and de-escalation?

Like what is why are there two different because it's a really bad graphic.

But yeah, but yes, it can do that, and it should do that, right?

Like there are gonna be times that we might not need to, there's family supports in place.

And we will fix this so that it's a reflective.

I was not trying to call out the.

No, I know, I just wanted to own it.

Um, and then the last thing I'll just say is like you had mentioned sometimes working with somebody and what environment they're in, whatever they're most comfortable in.

I will say that that is difficult to actually see how that plays out in practice, because if we have people who are living on the street, we know that if there is a response, they're being asked to move.

They're not being there, how are we helping those folks in their environment that they feel comfortable in?

And I'm not promoting that they should, you know, like folks should just you know get to stay all the these different places, but I think it is something that we need to think about in that frame of things, right?

If um, and I know you all do a lot of work and and are triaging and doing all these things, and I really appreciate that, but I think just trying to think in that lens of like if somebody their environment is on the streets, what is then that look like?

Yeah, we don't have to answer it now.

It's just more of a can I, Mr.

Chair?

Yes, you may very quickly and now it's okay.

Um I really really love this question.

So I think this is something that the Red Stroke Hunger team has been working on, is that we we really truly believe that it's not that people don't want services, it's that the city has never really been able to produce in a coordinated way, as you can see from this table.

Like we've never had a presentation where all four of us are together.

Um, and so we are also sharing resources.

So if you look at the top at the behavioral health and stability supports, that is a pool of money that historically has been 911, you know, DPD and DDPHE, and right now that is roads to recovery off ramps and then servicios through STAR.

And so we are actually sharing resources and referring into each other or connecting within each other.

So when someone does a response, um, we can actually offer them services in real time if that's what they want.

And so we just have more tools that we've been able to add and share amongst all of us.

Um so that is my short answer to thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Flynn.

Thank you.

I actually like that slide.

It looks like that lumbar MRI.

Real quickly, uh when you were talking about uh taking star calls at the 911 call center and kind of creating star dispatchers.

How does that happen?

Because when a person calls 911, they don't know STAR.

Correct.

They don't know co-responder, they just know they need some help.

So, how do you triage that initially to get it to this secondary uh team devoted just to start?

That's that's an excellent question.

And and the actual workflow isn't gonna change from what we're doing now.

The the key thing is that we'll have somebody so right now if you call 911 and you report a uh you know a crime in progress, the call taker is going to enter that in, and as soon as they select whatever that crime in progress is, it's going to shoot that over to the appropriate police dispatcher.

Then you've got a call taker and a police dispatcher.

What we want to do is create the mechanism by which if you if if you call in and report a welfare check, and we do the same thing we do today, we verify verified no presence of weapons, there's no criminal activity, that sort of thing.

That instead of going to a police dispatcher, it goes to a dedicated dispatcher who's on the radio with the star teams and can coordinate their response.

So you already have these dedicated star dispatchers?

Uh not yet.

That's what we're all dispatchers cross-trained.

Uh that's part of what we're working on.

We need to we need to create uh both policy and procedure, a training process.

We're working with TANDIS, who's the star operations manager, about you know, because right now we we can't our police dispatchers don't have the bandwidth or the subject matter expertise to get in the weeds on triaging between one star call and another.

They they all just kind of live in one bucket.

And so we're not uh doing a good enough job of prioritizing certain calls.

So that's what we're trying to design is better training, better technology that allows them to do that.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Flynn.

First and foremost, thank you all for being here.

I'm gonna take just one quick second producer, just give us a minute or two.

I I just wanted Tristan uh to clarify with the well power relationship.

I know the transition that is occurring administratively, internally.

Um, what's the ongoing relationship with Wellpower?

What how will that look um as far as additional touches, additional relationships that may not be specific to these clinicians?

Yeah, we we still have a really robust relationship with wellpower.

There are contractor for the solution center, they're a contractor for a number of services across the city.

Uh that will continue.

Uh we're working with them right now.

They have a contract in 2026 through I believe the end of August.

And so as their clinicians window, we will hire up.

And so that's what we're coordinating with them currently to figure out how to make this as seamless as possible.

Uh but the relationship is still in place, still strong, and still lives across many different programs that well power is involved in, and we still fully intend to look to Wellpower for providing services uh, you know, to star clients after we see them as well.

So there'll be no shortage of work.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, um, Lorez and your team for caring for Denver.

Thank you to this really amazing team of the amount of work you do that's um unseen, ongoing, and then your collaborative approach, I think is uh fantastic.

And with that, uh we have one item on consent that has not been pulled off, so the meeting is adjourned.

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you.