Health Safety Education and Services - Regular Meeting

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 22. My name is Darron 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 9. We have two briefings today and one consent item. But before we go to our items, why don't we go around the room and have introductions? We'll start on our right.

Thank you, mister chair. Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver's District 2.

Amanda Sawyer, District 5.

Paul

Cashman, South Denver, District 6.

Good morning, everyone. Serena Gonzalez Gutierrez, one of your council members at large.

It appears we have several council members that are virtual. Let's go first to council president pro tem.

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

And, Tim, I'm just going to wait a second to see if anyone else is joining in. Perfect. Perfect. Well, I'll take a quick moment. Today is administrative professionals day.

We don't have a ton of administrative professionals per se by title within council, but we have them throughout the city. And I wanna say to all of the administrative professionals throughout the city, I'm hoping you're enjoying your day. I'm hoping your boss gives you a hug if you allow that, and say thank you for all the good stuff that you do. But for our council aides, I'll overlay make it council aid professionals day. To our council 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 this train moving forward. 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 Meinhold, were you leaning in, sir, for Well, I

was just gonna throw in a happy Earth Day.

Yes. And

thank to 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 Lorax of city council.

Yeah. That is awesome, and that is important. And see, it's good for delays because I would like to welcome our good council member. And and it's time you could still introduce.

Thank you. Jamie Torres, West Denver thirty.

So thank you everyone for being here, and we'll turn it over to our friend, Lorez Meinhold, the executive director for Caring for Denver for your annual report. Excellent.

The floor is yours. 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 March 31 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 just our 2025 overview, we had received from the city 46,326,405. Sorry.

Not enough coffee yet this morning to read big numbers, but we allocated about $43,000,000. It sort of 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. But this is the five year grant summary, how much we've given away in each of the areas. Just a reminder, our first two years, we actually shared money back with the city around facilities, so that's what that facility's number is.

And then 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%. Sometimes they're multi year, so we hold on to them until dispersed. 37,000 people have in Denver have received clinical services. 18,000 are receiving services in a residential or outpatient setting.

27,000 engaged in groups or services with peer specialists, so trained peer professionals that help people in their recovery and help them see possibility, and 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 for councilwoman Gilmore, this has always been an important question. So we just wanted to create a slide 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 neighborhood in Urban Peak.

So neighbor 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 Spark. It will serve up to 18 youth. Currently, there are three youth in there as we've just launched it, and we're gonna be growing that so that they'll be getting twenty four seven 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 and are 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 mis use 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 they are 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 or reflected them in that same way.

Denver Health, the 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 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 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, 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, 1,600,000 last year to support and grow those mental health and substance misuse services.

638,000 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 500,000 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 and you're gonna hear a through the lead program, adding a peer support specialist. That's a program that Chris Richardson works with.

And then $22,100,000 for the co responder program. Again, twenty four seven 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 a new program within nine eleven is to embed behavioral health clinicians within the call center so that they can both take calls and deescalate 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 defaulting to a a law enforcement response if that's not appropriate. And you're gonna hear about the amazing things they're doing next as well. And so just wanted and then open it up to questions if there are some, but we try to focus on where where the questions have gone before, and so if there's other pieces or parts that people wanna talk to, we're happy to.

Thank you so much, Lores. And Kendall, the silent partner sitting in the audience, thank you also for helping to prepare this presentation. We have a queue that has started. If council members would like to join the queue, just raise your hand, Sami and I am, and I'll add you to the queue. We'll start first with council member Cashman, then council member Torres. Thank you, committee chairman. Thank you, Lores. So I in

the first slide where you were listing all the dollars, I believe it was like $79,000,000 in community centered solutions. What is community centered solutions?

Bruno, that's a great question. That's just one of our funding areas. 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 therapists of color in their northeast community center and providing services there so that not everybody has to go to Wellpower location or Denver Health, but can find where safety and trust is for them.

Or it might be in organizations. Servicios de la Raza is one of our community providers as well where they're serving sort of that birth to end of life age, lifespan local. So Lydia Prado over at Blossom in Westwood is an important community setting where they're providing those services. So 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, 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. So remind me, since Caring for Denver has been established, how much have you spent total?

We have spent in total the 246,928,883 out of the 257 received. So this is also a multiyear grant. When we get something that's three year, we book it then.

Sure. Bunch of dough. Yeah. My sense is that it's still a challenge for the average person to find affordable mental health care. Is still a challenge for people struggling with addiction to find an affordable bed at a treatment facility. So with with us having spent about a quarter of $1,000,000,000, 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 health access survey that the health institute did showed that in Denver, the amount of people reporting bad mental health days has decreased. Yeah.

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 Okay. We have more federal implications, whether that be to Medicaid, 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 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 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 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, that would seem to be an indicator for us that we need to game up Yep. In in the resources we're directing towards helping people with those struggles. Yes. So thank you for what you're

No. I agree. And and to be honest, that's why we have this care over incarceration funding area. Yep. For exactly that reason, that's where some of our systems have not been able to connect to people, and our our 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. 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 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 pilot 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 where we need to be.

Yeah. That difficult population. We're gonna serve them one way or the other. Correct. Correct. So thank you, mister chair. Thank you

so much, council member Cashman, council member Torres, and council president Pretendra, Mara Campbell. I'd like to welcome Council President Sandoval to the meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Lores. I'm looking through your website on the awarded grants and just want to 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 twenty twenty four awarded that might still be serving out. So that was really helpful, I think, to understand where is all the funding going to in District 3. One of the curious ones for me was Warren Village is mentioned as working exclusively in District 3. They don't have a location in 3. I know they have one in one. I know they have one in seven. Just wondering, is that programming exclusive to my council district, or is it utilizing their other locations?

That's a great question, and I can find out that answer for you. We rely on they say where they're serving, and so they identified that district. I know we fund, I think it's a Gilpin site and another site where we have actually embedded mental health providers within there for both the parents and the youth. And so it may be that there are some folks that have transitioned out that are still utilizing the services. But let me get back to you on how exactly Warren Village is serving District 3.

Okay. Because that leads me to just your slide four 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, 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. 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, serve 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 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 the 88000.

Okay. Okay. Thank you for having me understand that a little bit more. It does make me think a little bit about I appreciate NEST. NEST has done a lot to bring attention to neighborhoods that have lacked investment in a variety of ways or another. Not every council district has a Nest neighborhood, so maybe it's Nest Plus, right? Because I think about Council District 1, and you've got the Quignewtons, and you've got locations where people definitely need and don't already have embedded access to some of either the nonprofits, because they've moved south or out of Denver. 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, Councilman Albiguez's district, and with them go the nonprofit. So some of that migration might kind of move folks around.

Yeah, 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 as 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 and at least show how we align 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. Do you think about how you report out your impact in the future? Because when I think about it, I think there's an element to this that is responsiveness to a clinical need in the moment. And then there is what's driving that issue at its origin, at its root cause. Whether you're looking at all ends of that spectrum and how, and if that's something that can be portrayed to us in an image around we talk a lot about root causes.

We talk a lot about, yes, having a therapist or counselor when somebody needs one. So just wondering if you think about them in those kind of ranges.

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. There are definitely social needs associated with that, but we've tried to focus on what are those services from prevention to high end treatment intervention and where we live on the spectrum. Some of that we look at where other funders funding, whether that be the city, the state, or other foundations. 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 culturally what's important, 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 just having a sense of hopelessness, and how do we address that? So we do things like the crisis text line that sort of 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, I can try to I didn't want to overcommit Kendall, so I'm like, we can, but we'll create sort of a a figure that shows where our investments fall on that continuum Okay.

For 2025.

Okay. Alright. Thank you so much. No worries. Thank you. Mister chair.

Thank you, council member Torres. Council president Pro Tem, Aurora Kim.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Lorez, for the presentation. I had a few things, and maybe to build off of what you had just stated, really am excited about the MSU program and thinking about the behavioral workforce pipeline. But to that point, also knowing that for younger students, for schools, for early childhood education, it's embedded in the caregiver, a lot of the first line mental health support that happens. And so I don't know if you were thinking about exploring kind of building that additional support within those kind of programs 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. I'm

exactly at where you

should be.

Okay. Good. I was like, I I'm looking at you, but am I looking at you? We are looking at sort of 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. 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. We are funding that, but not necessarily as the pipeline in MSU. We have looked at or just recently funded City Year and There's another grant that I'm forgetting.

They have just started working to grow that licensed clinical social worker 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. Some of it is just how do we ensure it's Denver and how do we ensure that we are growing still being such a new organization and having short term grants, how do we make sure that we're on that end side of the pipeline? But happy to talk to you more about this, too.

Yeah. Well, I think about the different initiatives that we have. So, you know, partnerships, and I know that you have, you know, relationship or communication with, the Denver Preschool Program, but also Prosperity Denver Fund. And they directly are working with, you know, our youngest ones in the city. So 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. They were pandemic babies. So I'm very mindful of that, and I also hear that a lot from our school partners and from people within the district.

No, I appreciate it. And we are funding schools directly, especially a lot of the pathway schools. But some of the schools, like the Rock that works with a couple programs to do that early childhood development with young kids, sort of that two to six. And we do have regular conversations with both Rebecca and Elsa to talk about that alignment, where we are, what they're doing, and how it can match up.

Great. And then just one last comment about the Ness neighborhoods. I think in my district, in District 4, we have a Ness neighborhood, Kennedy, that often goes and the surrounding area, but also goes with a tremendous amount of isolation and just don't have the same level of support. So, you know, access and isolation compounded on being able to have those supports. And we don't have a lot of the nonprofits that that serve that that serve our community. So just, again, highlighting would really like to see other ways that we're tracking or knowing that all parts of our community are getting served.

No. No. Very much appreciate that. And again, we map everywhere we serve, and 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, 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 your community where there are less services as well.

Yeah. But thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Council President Portem. We have Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez and Councilmember Flynn.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you again for all of this. I was trying to comb through the annual report as well. 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 the numbers that are called out as far as, like, some of the the the data. Mhmm. 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 have that, but sometimes if we can't consistently capture that across, 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 it's something that we think about a lot about how do we do that and show the diversity of community that is being served. We do capture a bit about, you know, are they BIPOC communities, LGBTQIA communities, sort of some key communities we identified in our community report that we presented last month.

So we'll be having more of that going forward based on sort of 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, but it's more at a global grant level than at a 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 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 the 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. Yeah. I mean, I will just say in some of our communities, even if it's aggregated

And I get that. Like, I've worked in the field for a long time, and I totally get that. And I know that there are also ways, especially if we're talking about programs that have built that trust. You know? I don't know. I we can talk offline more about, like, ideas and ways that that information can be captured. And the reason why, again, is because of the overrepresentation of 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 Mhmm. At Gilliam.

Mhmm. Right? Yep. 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 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 councilmatoras for pointing that out, is having, like, a way for us to kind of see kind of the buckets. Right? So not only I know there's the the types of program that is is granted Mhmm. That grants go towards. But then there's, like, some of it is city.

Right? So some of it is, like, for instance, OSCI, 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 mean, I will say, when we think about the number so then then again, the number of grants versus the dollars going to the institutions, the number of grants probably more significantly represent community based organizations, like the Cervicios de la Raza, Centro Humanitarian, or Village Exchange, or Queer Asterix or, you know, a whole host of organizations. Schools would probably be then a next bucket. Mostly, to be honest, pathway schools Yes. And sort of entry points or five thousand two and eighty high school Yes.

That's not a pathway but a charter school. The city, we always break that down. I will say it's generally between 12% of the funds. 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 Wellpower.

So we can break that down on that way. I think, to your first point, we can think about how we get to that population, and maybe it's by who 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 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 fully liberated youth.

It is organizations rooted in the populations that need support, the organization that you used to work for as well. So we look at that even if we're not 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 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 it doesn't really reflect the community and the community needs, where they feel like they can get the services in a way that isn't going to impact them negatively. Okay.

Thank you so much. I'm happy to follow-up with you. Yeah. No. That'd be great. Thank you, mister chair.

Thank you, council member. Lars, we have two other council members in the queue and about seven minutes.

Oh, good.

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

Thank you, mister chair. I'm whereas 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. This doesn't include sales taxes collected in 2025?

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 reconciled, but it's about 48,000,000. The because

it's about flat for us.

Yeah. It's been flat. It's been flat. And 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 6 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. Okay. And so that's why we're giving away $25 in '26, and that's why it's not reflected because we haven't given them out yet.

Sure. Certainly. Yeah. Okay. And what's your fund balance?

Our fund balance, I can get back to that. I mean, that's where it's about

what's That's your 10.6 unallocated.

Yes. That's what's unallocated, meaning Okay. Different from we have a little admin reserve, probably about Right. Eight to nine months, I think, of admin reserve.

Got an accident.

I'm gonna drill down a little more on the map Sure. Of the twenty twenty five 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. And I'm wondering because one at least one of my neighborhoods, if not more Yep. Marley, but College View South Platte is very light

Mhmm.

Yet Cheesman Park, you know, neighborhoods that are not quite as, in my view, as needy as College View, are darker. So I 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 It's represented as a darker teal?

I mean, it's it's we we try to represent it back to to you all as city council districts and sort of enmap it to the inverted l. So, again, this is where people are are serving. We do have 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 but I can get you the district and list of organizations specifically for you.

Thank you. I would I would appreciate that. And then the last question I have is on the grants for 2025. One of them is a grant to to caring for Denver Foundation for some innovative an innovation grant related to Urban Peak. I'm curious why does the foundation actually provide services No. Self under grants you award yourself?

No. That's a great question. So sometimes so for the innovative grant, that's the spark that I talked about launching that 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 for caring for Denver, but for the community at large. And so this is 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

Right.

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.

That it stuck out for that reason.

No. No. No. I appreciate I appreciate the question.

That's it.

It's important. So what the difference for us is they were doing work directly for us, 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 organization lift up a program, then it then it comes out of grant dollars.

Thank you. Thank you, mister chairman.

Thank you, council member Flynn, council president Sandoval, and council member Sawyer.

Thank you. Thank you all. So on the annual report, Perez, you have intended impact goals. So 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 goals were met or not. How do we address that?

Doctor. Sure. I think what we're reporting on in 2012 what we reported on in 2024 were the goals that were met and sort of the outreach that happened. The same for 2025. I think when we talk improving mental health, reducing substance misuse, we are how we demonstrate that is sort of where what the These are outcome measures, like they received clinical care, they received 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, it will also take some time to see some of that improvement. 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 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?

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 multiyear 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've they've reported it in one year, and it might be sometimes the the same people from last year to this year.

And so we just the 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

think it's just probably the way you have the report set up, because we have 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 is hard because it's people and it's 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 year, 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 end report. Yeah, you have to have an annual report 100%. But I would hope that the annual report just had more substance in it instead of listing grants and saying, Here's the number, because 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 1 in Sloan's Lake. On your map, it's not even I have nothing in your map. I have white. Like, it looks like nobody's served in Council District 1. Yeah. It's like it might be

It might be the green. Even the light 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 map four, I don't see any color. If the producer could pull up map four In the PowerPoint? Yeah. No. I Yeah.

Because you're we we'll work on that and show so 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. 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.

Because, like, if we're giving that much, like, to the Children's Advocacy Center, Denver Children's Advocacy Center, a half 1,587,000 over two years, what what's, like, yeah, improve or maintain mental health 100%, increase equity in mental health and substance misuse outcomes. But the Children's Advocacy Center, their mission is a bit different than that. 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. And like Family Star, is that Family Star Montessori?

Yes. I believe so. Yeah. I mean, what I'll what I'll the Denver Children's so this is their intended so 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 they'll show up a bit in this data, but the Children's Advocacy Center actually works with all I 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. But I hear you saying that we're trying to find that right balance because when you're doing responsive grant making like we're doing, we're responding to what grantees are saying they want to do in mental health or substance misuse, which means they're not always measuring the same thing. And so in past, we've had conversations with councilwoman Torres, 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 and and it may be like some cohort learning. What have we learned across the five years of investments in peer specialists and promotoras, 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 a better picture of it. But we'll continue to talk because, again, we're we we wanna 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 the ones that are specific to Council District 1? Because it's really the the map is just really hard. And, like, Healing Generations is in Council District 1, and I don't see it reflected on the map even though it's all throughout the whole entire system, which I get, like, they serve kids throughout. And I would just reemphasize, like, as 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 reinvest in these? So just want to reemphasize that.

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

And what I should also is that

And, Lores, I apologize. We're going to have to cut this

Totally fine. Quick. But please, make a quick

Yeah.

What I'll say is that 2025 reaches also grants we made in 2025. So when we make grants to the different healing generation, they may have showed up in last year's map or the if it's multiyear. So that's the other thing that I think we can improve in the map that is probably not being reflected as well.

Got it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, council president. Look around the room, see if there any further questions. Thank you so much, Lores, for the presentation. Look forward to your follow through on the questions that council members have asked for. And with that, we'll transition to our update on Denver's clinical response system. We'll take a quick second. And Aaron and team, come forward.

Oh, did you forget all my stuff?

Yeah. Sorry. My key I

was like, where are my keys and my phone?

Jason, thank you

for reminding me.

How's it going?

Good. Thank you.

And whenever you are ready, Erin, the floor is yours.

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

We're having a

start of presentation.

We're no honest. We're honest. Right? Hi, everyone. Aaron Nietenzio, director of RHOT's recovery with the mayor's office. 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.

Andrew Dameron, director of Denver nine one one.

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

Tristan Sanders, director of community behavioral health at DDPHE.

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 wanna 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 Lorettaz has just alluded to. 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 three one one. And we're not actually gonna talk about this today. Cole Chandler will be in community planning and housing committee on May 12, and he is really gonna be going through this. I think it's titled street engagement operations. And so that will be the three one one street engagement team and how that system works.

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

We now, thanks to Caring for Denver, are able to have embedded clinicians at 911. 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, Denver Police Department. And with that, we will start with Andrew.

Sure. Again, Andrew Dameron, director of Denver nine one one. The the main thing that is important to understand with what we're doing with these clinicians is, Denver nine eleven has been doing a lot of work recently to really embrace our role within kind of intercept zero and one of SAMHSA's sequential Intercept Model. For anybody who's not familiar with that, it's, kind of a 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 kinda 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, 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. And so 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 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 wanna create a system where we were still operating in a silo.

So the embedded clinicians at nine one one 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 gonna 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, fully integrated into the larger kind of process. The 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, 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. Really trying to kind of, make sure that information is being disseminated when appropriate as thoroughly as possible. Okay. Go ahead. Caring for Denver granted us 385,000 for three clinicians over three years. This is going to kinda operate as a as a pilot to see how we can kinda really integrate this into Did you

correct in real time that number?

You said 3. It's 7.

Did I say three? Yeah. Sorry. Okay. I I I saw three afterwards in my mind.

Okay. So seven Did you check me? Sorry.

Yes. And then they'll be working staggering shifts. You know, with only three people, we're not gonna be able to have twenty four seven coverage, but we're gonna try and get as close as we possibly can. And, again, hoping to have more calls resolved. You know, right now, there are a whole host of calls that, sit on hold waiting for STAR to to come available in order to go. So, 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? 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 a professional in the building is gonna be really, really helpful. Yeah. That's me.

Great. So I'll talk a little bit about STAR and where it sits within the system and first just say, 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. 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.

So STAR, as you know, is a civilian response. It pairs a behavioral health clinician with an EMT or paramedic to respond to certain 911 calls. It's really, you know, intended to not be allowing calls to escalate to a police response and other types of response. And so, you know, we've always said 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 Servicios and the network that they support. That might be other city facilities like the Behavioral Health Solutions Center and or Denver Cures, etcetera. There's a number of places that they could take folks. Star operates seven days a week from 6AM to 10PM.

There's up to van five vans in service at any given time. It varies by day. And as I mentioned, people are connected to follow-up care and case management through Servicios. And we are very excited about the opportunity to be hiring directly the clinician portion of the fan response so that we are actually in an integrated EMR, like Andrew was mentioning, with everybody that's working across the system. We're able to directly, know, triage calls to STAR in that manner and able to follow-up 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 before.

So I think we have a big opportunity with some of the changes operationally that are coming online this year. The budget, this is pretty confusing, but if you wanna dive into it, we we can maybe do a briefing offline that might be more beneficial. But effectively, you know, there 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 Servicio Stilanassa. 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 those clinicians in house over the course of twenty six. All of that should be in place ideally by, I mean, middle of the year, but realistically probably in the fall. So we'll say August ish, September. And really what's important is that, you know, the level of service is gonna remain, you know, seven days a week, 6AM to 10PM, 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 by having clinicians and staff in our department that we'll be able to execute going forward.

Which brings it to me with the co responder program. We are proudly celebrating our ten year of being a clinical unit within the deep Denver Police Department. We started out in 2016 with officers being able to engage community members that are coming across law enforcement with behavioral health issues and how do we get those individuals not only with de escalation, crisis services, connection support, but then also how do we get those individuals to long term care. Can't believe it's been ten years. I was young back then.

But naturally, progressed through that and through the the funds related to caring for Denver to be able to be part of the sheriff's department now related to evictions and how do we manage situations related with that. Not only that, but hoarding situations, things that come across that are the sheriff's department with the civil side of we wanna best solve and how do we come up with a better 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 ride on the fire engine, but they do the follow-up care attached with it. We approach everything with the trauma informed lens. I think we have come so far in ten years with being able to not only partner alongside law enforcement and be able to give 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. 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 our lingo, our approaches that aren't taught in the academy, but have actually just through riding with a clinician for ten 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 a different side of law enforcement and be that partnership attached to that, all with the goal of being able to mitigate the crisis. Part of which I love about STAR and the Servicio connection and that whole partnership with the the whole team is we have our OCCs. So every behavioral health thing has a next step, next level. What can we do to get this person a game plan to 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 am like, I need to go meet these organizations. They are really good. They're really gritty, and it's not just about the behavioral health side. We're not pushing kind of that therapy is the only option. It is, do we need peers? Do we need support? Do we need community connections? 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.

Last year, Caring for Denver funded the correspondent program at 22,100,000. We're currently in the cycle right now to be reapplying for those funds for 2627. And then, like I said, we are averaging about on year to year less than 2% arrest or citation. Individuals that do get arrested or cited, 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 reentry plan that actually is supported with whatever took place on that front end. Shocker not a shocker probably. 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. We have almost no IA complaints related to an officer clinician partnership. Eleven percent in 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 may take those individuals into care after the fact. And, again, April 1, ten year anniversary, April Fool's Day. Who would have thought?

Okay. And so with that, it's just gonna loop back to kind of the beginning. And there are some missing that I wanna acknowledge. So there actually should be arrows from the nine one one clinicians also up to behavioral health services, and that was a miss on my part. I apologize. 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 fuse 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. So when they go the goal is to deescalate 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.

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 on how we make sure people are getting paid, and the coordination is going the right way. And then STAR has De La Raza as their backup for that not backup as their referral for the programs and stability supports from there. And with that, did I miss anything, team, from this one? K. 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. Just think it's amazing, the work that you all do. And so we have a queue. We'll start first with council member Sawyer.

Thanks, mister chair. Thanks, you guys. Having sat here for seven years watching the all of these programs function in silos separately, I have to just say it's really exciting to see things finally integrated and coming together because I think that was a huge gap. So I am very excited about that. I am a little nervous about you bringing clinicians in house.

Just because I'm not a 100% sure that that's what the city of Denver should be doing. We are a city. We are not clinicians. Can you 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. 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. So first of all, we've had that discussion. So what should a 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. 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, 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 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 nine one one 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 wanna make sure that we'll like, we've had this debate about Star being twenty four seven 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 wanna 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, 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.

I was really honest.

Maybe that was so It's just

you because I'm Yeah.

The other thing that I will say is that, we have spent a great deal of time looking at, cities that have similar programs to STAR. So Seattle has their CARE program. Durham, North Carolina has HEART. Albuquerque has their, Department of Community Safety. And the commonality with these programs is that their their responder staff are city employees.

And what we have seen is, a 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, 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 in Eugene, and then this line, and then there's Denver Star, and then boom. It 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 a direct solution to a lot of those challenges?

And there's been a lot of fact finding also with the BHA who oversees there, the state correspondent, and saying, like, is there a pathway that you've seen trends in? And we've seen a lot of the trends that were contracted clinical teams out in the community all coming coming coming into the city. We have Inglewood or or Glendale, Lafayette, Adams, Arvada, Commerce City 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 we can do it day one. And then BHA is also kind of saying it's to each jurisdiction.

There's kind of determination how they wanna be able to approach that, and we support it. And, 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, etcetera. 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 be 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. 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 Okay. In reverse if we have

to, but that's not the intent.

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 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, 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 and 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,

but I'm hoping it's before July 2027. 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 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 what that change actually look like.

It looks like

a lot of minutes. Okay. I appreciate it. 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 of seven years, eight years since then, what I'm what what I keep hearing significant concern about from DPD and what I keep, like, seeing reflected in our crime statistic numbers is a huge massive uptick domestic violence.

So that's our co responder space. It has been a really successful program, and if the public does not know 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 a mental health care responders. So as the number of domestic violence cases have grown, has our program grown with it?

Yes. I would say up till about probably '22. We are continuing to expand and grow. And, I think with, shifting landscapes of funding, we have lost funding related to state, that historically we had, so we lost that. So we had to reduce numbers. I think, you know, we're all scrounging. Like, this program, we should have a clinician in every officer's vehicle, in my opinion. 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. We don't wanna live on grant funding forever. We want to actually be sustainable member of a general fund, and that's going to continue to be something we push for.

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

Yeah. I really appreciate that. I will just say that this is one of my major concerns. Feel and 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 investing in some of the incredibly important things like our co responder program that we have seen. That's where we're cutting dollars, but we're continuing to keep money, you know, in 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, which means cops are going out instead of corresponders, which escalates the situation, or no one calls them for help because they don't want a police officer there, and then 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, 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, I really appreciate what you do. Think I this is a big concern for me, and I I just appreciate the conversation that we're having. Thanks.

Thank you, council member Sawyer, council member 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 on slide 15. I for some reason, it was in my mind that we had one and maybe this is tell me if I'm wrong. One co responder per police district.

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

Okay. And so, 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 officer they're paired with?

It's usually on any given day at six. Sometimes we might have an overlap on, like, a Wednesday or something where, like, the teams kind of overlap, so we might have more out. Roll call, basically, it used to be each jurist each jurisdiction kinda does it their own way of, like, is it one officer that rides with one clinician for the rest of eternity? 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 wanna 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. And so those individuals, when they pair up, they're in that car, clinicians, they're 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 queue 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. There's a lot more trust and a garnered relationship with those systems.

Okay. And is there a comparison of either shift outcomes or kind of case results between vehicles that did not have a co responder and vehicles that did?

No. Not currently, but that is a fantastic thought. Mhmm. Yes. I love that. We'll we'll look into

that for sure.

Okay. Alright. Thank you so much. And Thank you.

I'll just throw one more thing out there too. Another initiative that we have at nine one one is we are building out a new dispatch sort of, job class, not job class, but essentially a new position that is going to be focused on STAR, possibly coresponders, some of these other non law enforcement teams. Because right now, as 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 call 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 a zillion hours of training, and there's a future where we don't have behavioral health experts who are also law enforcement personnel. Or there's some kind of, I don't know, equity in education and background and specialization in some way. So I don't always feel like these are two different types of people.

I think there is a future where we have more folks out on the street who have a background in behavioral health and clinical health. Just seeing what we're seeing every day makes me feel that way. I think even when I look at the fire department responding to more other calls than fires, we ask our first responders to respond to whatever is out there, and it just feels like it's this growing of ballus of behavioral behavioral health health calls calls and and kind of crisis intervention. So thank you so much for all of the roles that you're playing in working together. Thank you.

Thank you, council member Torres, council member Gonzalez Gutierrez, and then council member Flynn.

Thank you, mister chair. Thank you guys for for this presentation. So

a couple

of things. One, just to be clear, we currently have employees before this that are licensed clinicians. Right? Like, we have LCSW's licensed clinic clinical social workers that work for Denver Human Services currently. They may not they may practice on their own or they may they don't necessarily practice in that capacity in their job, but they are licensed clinical workers, and they can actually do therapy if if they needed to or whatever. They have the training. Right? Okay. You're nodding your heads. Yes. Have and they're 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 wanna, like, be clear on that. Like, this isn't necessarily a new thing. I I like the fact that you're trying to address that kind of continuity of care situation by having these folks in house. I would say, like, what gives me pause on some of that is having, you know, them 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. It's been mentioned today with, you know, some of the specific initiatives and how 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 what? Right? If we're able to then turn that into, like, a general fund, you know, a a part of our city programming. I think that speaks to a lot of the conversations we have around how do we properly allocate our dollars, our general fund 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.

My my one question was going to that system overview slide, 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 service supports de escalation and then divert from jail. Can you just do, like, a really quick just walk through of, like, what those arrows all mean and how that works?

Yeah. I I just would acknowledge that we built this slide, and then we have had a lot of feedback around, like, that slide is really bad. So Oh, this is actively trying to

understand it. But we

are we

someone is actively trying to fix it so that it isn't more user friendly. But, Andrew, I think you

do really good 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? So so if you kinda look at it from that from that perspective, if it's something that we can hand off to nine eight eight and just give it to them, great, all the way up to, no, we need armed law enforcement response.

Okay. But then so then the de escalation, like, is there a connection between the behavioral health services and stability supports and de escalation? Like, what is why are there two different

options? A really bad graphic. But yeah. But yes. It it can do that, and it should do that. Right? Like Yeah. There are gonna be times that we might not need to. There's family supports in place. Got it. And we will fix this so that it's reflective of

I was not trying to call

out No.

I know.

I just wanted to own it.

Understand it. 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 they're 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 in these different places, but I think it is something that we need to think about in that frame of things.

Right? If and I know you all do a lot of work and 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. I don't have to answer it now. It's just more of a thought. Am I, mister chair?

Yes. May very quickly announce.

Okay. I really, really love this question. So I think this is something that the roads recovery 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. 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 nine one one, 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, 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. So that is my short answer to it.

Thank you. Thank you, mister chairman.

Thank you very much. Council member Flynn?

Thank you. I actually like that slide. It looks like

Thank you.

My left

lumbar MRI. Real quickly, Andrew, when you were talking about taking STAR calls at the 911 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, team devoted just to STAR?

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

of thing.

Right. 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?

Not yet. That's what we're working on.

Are all are all dispatchers dispatchers cross cross

trained? Trained? That's part of what we're working on. We need to we need to create, both policy and procedure, a training process. We're working with Tandis, who's the 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 Right. Triaging between one star call and another. They they all just kinda live in one bucket, and so we're not, 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.

Perfect. Thank you, mister Nacho.

Mister chair. Thank you so much, council member Flynn. First and foremost, thank you all for being here. I'm gonna take just one quick sec because the producer just give us a minute or or two. I I just wanted Tristan to clarify with the Wellpower relationship. I know the transition that is occurring administratively, internally. What's the ongoing relationship with Wellpower? What how will that look 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. They're our contractor for the solution center. They're a contractor for a number of services across the city. That will continue. We are working with them right now. They have a contract in 2026 through, I believe, the August. And so as their clinicians wind down, we will fire up. And so that's what we're coordinating with them currently to to figure out how to make this as seamless as possible. But the relationship is still in place, still strong, and still lives across many different programs that Wellpower is involved in, and we still fully intend to look to Wellpower for providing services, you know, to Star clients after we see them as well. So there'd be no shortage of work.

Alright. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Lores, and your team for caring for Denver. Thank you to this really amazing team of the amount of work you do that's unseen, ongoing, and then your collaborative approach, I think, is fantastic. And with that, we have one item on consent that has not been pulled off, so the meeting is adjourned. Thanks, everyone.

Thank you.