News Release
[July 24, 2024 – Denver, Colo.]: Caring for Denver Foundation proudly announces its latest round of grant funding, totaling more than $13 million, to support 18 community-based organizations, and City and County of Denver agencies, dedicated to providing alternatives to jail solutions.
Founded and funded by the people of Denver through a sales tax initiative, Caring for Denver Foundation provides financial support for programs and services that address Denver’s mental health and substance misuse needs.
Grantees are granted funds under one of Caring for Denver’s community-identified funding areas: Alternatives to Jail. These grants reflect Caring for Denver’s commitment to preventing people with substance misuse and mental health conditions from unnecessarily interacting with the criminal legal system.
“We’re excited to partner with community organizations and the City on solutions that ensure Denverites receive the vital care they deserve,” shared Lorez Meinhold, Caring for Denver executive director. “The criminalization of mental health conditions has wide-ranging and devastating consequences. People grappling with mental health and substance misuse challenges deserve compassion and care, not incarceration.”
Each funded program addresses the complex needs of individuals involved in the legal system through a range of services, including mental health support, peer counseling, substance misuse treatment, trauma-informed care, culturally competent services, and comprehensive case management. The grantees provide essential resources to successfully divert individuals from the legal system and support their recovery by meeting them where they are in their journey. These initiatives aim to decrease recidivism and support a successful transition into the community.
Alternatives to Jail
Caring for Denver Foundation approved 18 grants totaling more than $13 million to community-based nonprofit organizations, and City and County of Denver agencies, in the Alternatives to Jail funding area.
- Brink Literacy Project – Implementing therapeutic storytelling programming with incarcerated and post-release youth and adults to increase mental health awareness, prevent substance misuse, and decrease recidivism.
- City and County of Denver – Denver Police Department – Continuing the existing co-responder program, providing 24/7 coverage to areas of highest need with a team of clinicians, case managers, a program evaluator, and a program manager.
- City and County of Denver – Department of Public Health & Environment – Increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the STAR program by enhancing the wraparound care network. STAR will also add additional support pieces that are critical for its continued expansion.
- City and County of Denver – District Attorney’s Office – Providing culturally competent services that repair the harm caused by crime to victims and the community, increase social competency skills of offenders, and to reduce the likelihood of further involvement in the court system.
- Collaborative Healing Initiative within Communities – Facilitating gender-specific, holistic, and multi-generational approaches to healing undiagnosed and unaddressed trauma, which is the most frequent root cause of incarceration for young women and girls of color.
- Colorado Juvenile Defender Center – Offering culturally and linguistically responsive behavioral health care to young people (10 – 25) in the legal system.
- Denver Collaborative Partnership – Savio Management Group – Improving service engagement, and access to mental health and substance misuse service to system-involved youth and their siblings. Youth advocates support building trust to increase connection to screening and services.
- Denver County Court – Fostering equitable access to community supports and services for adults with behavioral health needs by expanding the resources available across all Specialty Programs (regardless of charge type), bridging the justice system and the community.
- The Don’t Look Back Center – Providing women, transwomen and gender non-conforming individuals living with post-traumatic stress disorder, trauma, behavioral health, and justice involvement with a stable and reliable source of mental health and substance misuse counseling and care.
- The Empowerment Program – Offering intensive, trauma-informed peer support services to women with criminal legal involvement living in Project: Elevate to reduce recidivism by increasing engagement in mental health and substance misuse supports, and stability in the community.
- Hazelbrook Community Center – Conducting a harm reduction program offering a safe, supervised residence for individuals starting their recovery journeys. The program will provide wraparound services to help individuals transition from early sobriety to stable sober living.
- Mental Health Colorado – Helping individuals involved in the criminal legal system with unmet mental health and/or co-occurring disorders and unhoused individuals by offering shelter with mental health, substance misuse, and other wraparound services.
- The NXT Chapter Foundation INC – Facilitating a 12-week transformative program designed to support individuals in their journey of personal growth and reintegration into society. Participants undergo extensive case management focused on substance misuse and mental wellbeing.
- Realness Project – Expanding the program at Denver Women’s Correctional Facility to include formerly incarcerated graduates as facilitators to address mental health, substance misuse, and trauma recovery by fostering emotional awareness, community, and connection.
- The Road Called STRATE – Supporting individuals who might otherwise get missed by the system in accessing mental health services faster than traditional resources in community mental health.
- Second Chance Center, Inc. – Supporting licensed behavioral health professionals with expertise in mental health, substance misuse, and dual diagnosis on this organization’s jail re-entry care team to provide immediate assessments and interventions before connecting people with community partners for ongoing care.
- Tribe Recovery Homes – Providing individual and group peer support in sober living homes and an intensive outpatient program, and to provide peer navigation to individuals who are exiting the Denver Jail as they await trial, connecting them with mental health care and substance misuse treatment.
- Turning Point of the City – Creating a community-based collaborative working alongside Denver youth who are justice-engaged to offer mental health and substance misuse counseling to complement current programming which offers intensive case management and educational support.
About Caring for Denver Foundation
Caring for Denver Foundation was founded and funded with overwhelming voter support to address Denver’s mental health and substance misuse needs by growing community-informed solutions, dismantling stigma, and turning the community’s desire to help into action. Guided by community input, the organization has granted more than $169 million in the areas of alternatives to jail, community-centered solutions, youth, and special initiatives since it began.