Denver Youth Healthy Connections Project

The Justice and Mental Health Collaboration Program (JMHCP), seeks to increase public safety through innovative cross-system collaboration for individuals with mental illness who come into contact with the criminal or juvenile justice systems. This program is funded through the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act of 2004 (MIOTCRA) (Public Law 108-414). The program is designed to increase public safety by facilitating collaboration among the criminal justice, juvenile justice, and mental health and substance abuse treatment systems to increase access to services for offenders with mental illness. Activities under this initiative encourage early intervention for 'system-involved' individuals with mental illness; provides new and existing mental health courts with various treatment options; maximizes diversion opportunities for nonviolent offenders with mental illness and co-occurring disorders; promotes training for justice and treatment professionals on criminal justice processes and mental health and substance abuse issues; and facilitates communication, collaboration, and the delivery of support services among justice professionals, treatment and related service providers, and governmental partners.

The Denver Youth Healthy Connections Project (YHCP) proposes to implement and expand the existing mental health court pilot programs while concurrently providing technical assistance to treatment providers, and multi-disciplinary training to systems coming into contact with youth suffering from co-occurring disorders. The project will be coordinated through the Denver Juvenile and Family Justice Treatment Accountability for Safer Communities Program (DJFJ TASC). CA/NCF