Speaker 0: Councilmember Ken Each has called out Bill 29 for comment and under pending, no items have been called up. Did I miss anything? All right, Madam Secretary, if you'd please put the first item on our screens, which is 1375. Councilmember CdeBaca, go ahead with your questions.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Mr. President. Is there anybody here who can answer questions? How are you? Very excited to see this caring for Denver dollars get kicked off. Are these part of it?
Speaker 4: Pardon me?
Speaker 5: Are these part of the caring for?
Speaker 4: This is a crime prevention and control commission funds.
Speaker 5: Is this going to go to. So our district was tossing around the potential of a cahoots pilot. Is this that or is this going toward that?
Speaker 4: This is not this is separate, although it is my understanding that the Department of Safety has applied to carry for Denver for those funds. And I think that that has been awarded just very recently. But this represents the existing co responder program.
Speaker 5: Okay. So can you explain to me what this specifically is funding in the crisis, in the co responder program? Is it? How many staff does it.
Speaker 2: Employee.
Speaker 4: So that the total number of staff is 12 clinicians, which is enough to have a co responder in every police district seven days a week?
Speaker 5: And is this adding on co responders or is this funding the current ones?
Speaker 4: Is funding the current ones? The expansion is that request through caring for Denver.
Speaker 5: And can you tell me a little bit about how we monitor our return on investment? What is the evaluation process for our co responders?
Speaker 4: Sure. That's it's kind of a tricky thing to measure because often what the co responder does is it prevents something from happening. So it's hard to it's hard to monetize a counterfactual, something that that didn't happen that might have. I can give you some numbers of the number of incidents that happened in 2018 and sort of the outcomes of some of those, if that's helpful. But it's not really like a true return on investment in a in a percentage. Okay. Give me 2 seconds.
Speaker 5: Thank you. This is a very exciting and important part of the work being done, but.
Speaker 4: It's really great stuff. Okay. In 2018, the Crisis Intervention Response Unit responded to 1725 incidents that had the potential to escalate. Of that 1725, 69 individuals received a citation or arrest. 286 were placed on an emergency mental health hold. 71 were connected to housing and treatment. 13 resulted in detox and 567 engaged in continued services with MH KD for various diagnoses like bipolar, depression, PTSD, schizophrenia.
Speaker 5: And so how in the future will we determine if this is a program that we want to expand or continue funding? What are our metrics for that?
Speaker 4: So the Crime Prevention and Control Commission is looking continues to. To perform an analysis on every program. And in this particular one, I think we do need to look at different metrics and figure out how do we identify a a, you know, an actual dollar amount, like a cost return on investment. At this time, we haven't identified that. So I, I can tell you that we continue to work on it. And as as you're now on the commission, you'll be part of that work.
Speaker 5: Awesome. And quick question about the 12 that are in each district. Do we find that they're necessary in all of the districts or do we find that most of the incidences are coming in specific district?
Speaker 4: I don't have that information, but I'd be happy to work with KD on on getting that and seeing if we can't provide that, you know, some some sort of heat map that shows geographically like if there's a, if there's some imbalance.
Speaker 5: Got it. And so what exactly is warranting the amended 700 just a continuation or.
Speaker 4: Right. So for the for the past couple of years, we've actually had this contracted at $1,000,000. But because MHC is able to build Medicaid for some portion of the services that they deliver when they're Medicaid members, they're actually seeing a return from Medicaid around 40%. So we're requesting $700,000 to operate the co responder program in its current state for 2020. And that just kind of chews up the amount that that the city actually expends.
Speaker 5: And these are not PCC dollars.
Speaker 4: These are CPC.
Speaker 5: So these are from the pilot dollars given to KPCC to administer or what budget are we using these dollars for?
Speaker 4: So the PCC is a special revenue fund through the expanding authority is the Department of Public Health and Environment. So like that's the the budget that it sits in. Is that does that answer?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's fine. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. That's all the questions I had.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Councilmember. Councilmember Gilmore, do you also have questions on this one?
Speaker 2: No. President Clark, I just have a comment.
Speaker 0: Go ahead.
Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for this contract. It's a very important time for this to come through our city. And I'm really looking forward to following the work. And so more information that you can provide, especially for us to get out to the community so they know or if they're contacted by the police, if they could request a correspondence or request someone to accompany a police officer when they make those phone calls. Sure. That would be.
Speaker 4: Really, really helpful. Sure. We're currently working on our 2019 evaluation now. So hopefully we'll have some, you know, some some updated information that we can talk about, like how did it work in 2019? Those numbers I gave you were were 2018. So so we'll be happy to share that with council, you know, as we get it.
Speaker 2: Okay, great. And then, you know, we've unfortunately had some youth violence tragedies over the past few months, but then also families that just they were in that gap where they weren't able to access mental health supports. And so I guess beyond when a co responder accompanies a police officer, will you be tracking or I'm requesting that you do track where there's a gap or where there's a gap in services so that we're really avoiding sending folks off on kind of a wild goose chase. And then they get frustrated and they can't get the services. And so then they kind of close up and try to do things internally.
Speaker 4: Sure. Absolutely. I mean, some of those conversations are already happening as we work with the Department of Safety on their, you know, initiatives on their side. But we'll be will be happy to, you know, make a make a point of of keeping an eye on that so we can report back.
Speaker 2: Perfect. Thank you. Sure. Thank you, President Park.
A resolution approving a proposed Amendatory Agreement between the City and County of Denver and Mental Health Center of Denver for operation of the Denver Crisis Intervention Response Unit.
Amends a contract with Mental Health Center of Denver by adding $700,000 for a new total of $1,700,000 and one year for a new end date of 12-31-20 for operation of the Crisis Intervention Response Unit, known as the co-responder program, which pairs a mental health clinician with a police officer to respond to calls involving individuals with suspected mental health needs (ENVHL - 201952894-01). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review period is on 2-18-20. The Committee approved filing this item at its meeting on 12-18-19.