Your Hope Center, the Eagle County nonprofit launched to address a community mental health crisis, will close in June

Your Hope Center, the Eagle County organization founded in 2018 to address the local mental health crisis, will be dissolving at the end of June.

Vail Health and the Eagle County School District will be taking over the services the nonprofit provides to the community. Vail Health will absorb Your Hope Center‘s crisis response and community stabilization services, and the school district will take the school-based clinician program in-house beginning next school year.

“This transition doesn’t mean any of our services are ending,” said Carrie Benway, executive director of Your Hope Center. “We know that we grew to meet the needs of our community, and … it’s very important to me that the services continue.”

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Vail Health has already taken over the nonprofit’s crisis response system, switching over the phone network on the morning of March 3. The system will remain the same by offering care 24 hours per day, seven days per week, year-round, often by many of the same people.

“Clinicians who were working Sunday as Your Hope Center clinicians were working Monday as Vail Health employees,” Benway said.

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Why is Your Hope Center dissolving?

Your Hope Center is closing due to a variety of factors, including financial limitations and regulatory changes at the state level.

“We knew that Your Hope Center was facing a pretty significant shortfall starting in (fiscal year) 25 due to many federal grants coming to an end, and so as we were looking at sustainability for continuing the crisis services and the school-based services, we made the decision that in order to continue those services long-term, we would need the ability to bill for those services in a clinical model,” said Dana Erpelding, senior director of operations at Vail Health and a Your Hope Center board member.

Last year, regulatory changes at the state level would have eliminated Your Hope Center’s ability to bill Medicaid as of July 1, so the nonprofit’s board decided to partner with Vail Health on its electronic health record. Since then, Your Hope Center’s services have been operating under a memorandum of understanding with Vail Health, making this transition a natural next step.

Meeting a community need

Your Hope Center has continued to grow every year since it was founded to meet community needs for services, becoming a nonprofit at the start of 2021. At its peak in 2023, Your Hope Center had 36 clinicians offering community-focused care.

The nonprofit has served around 2,000 community members per year over the past couple of years through its three programs, including documenting about 1,600 crisis calls per year on its crisis line.

The majority of calls made to the line result in the person in crisis being kept at home on a safety plan rather than being transported to a hospital or community detention center.

In 2024, 44 people met the criteria to be placed on an M1 hold and were transported to a higher level of care. In 2019, before Your Hope Center implemented its 24/7 mobile response team, that number was closer to 120.

Benway said that during her time with Your Hope Center, when the crisis team responded to calls in the community, community members remained at home on a safety plan 80% of the time.

Crisis response and community stabilization efforts will remain the same or grow under Vail Health

Vail Health has vowed to continue to operate the two Your Hope Center services it is absorbing — crisis response and community stabilization — on par with or better than before.

“If anything, services are expanding,” said Kala Bettis, a high acuity services manager for Vail Health Behavioral Health. “The high acuity service net has only widened to continue to provide that safety net for continuity of care.”

Vail Health offers crisis services, but people who enter the hospital’s system for those services are also eligible for step down care, including intensive outpatient programming and “short-term, solution-focused care,” Bettis said. “It’s a continuum service net, or wraparound care, based on a high acuity population that may need crisis stabilization in the longer term before accessing outpatient therapy.”

“It allows for our highest-risk patients in the community to get immediate access to ongoing care for their behavioral health and physical health with reduced barriers, because it’s all under one roof,” said Dr. Paige Baker-Braxton, the director of Outpatient Behavioral Health at Vail Health Behavioral Health.

Though Your Hope Center is shutting down in part due to lack of funding, Vail Health remains confident in its ability to fund operation.

“Now that Vail Health Behavioral Health has the ability to accept reimbursement not only through Medicaid, but also through commercial insurance, it really helps us to be financially sustainable with all the clinical services we offer,” Erpelding said.

The crisis response services will remain free to everyone thanks to funding from the state’s Behavioral Health Administration and through Rocky Mountain Health Plans that supports crisis programs.

The community stabilization program can bill commercial insurance or Medicaid, and uninsured individuals may also be covered by grants from the state’s Behavioral Health Administration. 

Vail Health also is applying for funding made available through Eagle County’s 1A ballot measure, which passed in November 2017 and authorized a marijuana tax to fund local mental health programs. Your Hope Center has received funding from 1A since it was founded.

School district plans to take behavioral health services in-house

Your Hope Center’s presence in schools began with just two therapists in 2019. This year, there were 15 clinicians serving students across the district’s 18 schools. The partnership provided behavioral health services to hundreds of students, as well as crisis response services when needed.

As Your Hope Center approaches its end, the school district has decided to take its behavioral health services in-house. 

“The decision was made collaboratively considering what would work best for both Vail Health and Eagle County School District to ensure we were still able to provide clinicians at our schools throughout the valley,” said Phil Qualman, the Eagle County School District superintendent. “It became clear that with various funding changes the current model was no longer sustainable in the original structure.”

“We will continue to provide services to the best of our abilities,” Qualman said.

The school district plans to have eight clinicians serve its 18 schools, a slight reduction from its current number. Smaller schools that are close in proximity will share clinicians, while larger schools will have an assigned clinician. Scheduling and evaluation of clinicians will be overseen by a program supervisor.

The reduction in clinicians will be “balanced by the increased capacity for behavioral health at Vail Health’s Wiegers Clinic,” which offers outpatient services in Edwards, Qualman said.

The Vail Health team also emphasized that the hospital’s behavioral health services will continue to be available to the school district should students need care beyond the school-based clinicians.

“The program will live with the school district, but our partnership with the school district is very long and ongoing,” Baker-Braxton said.

The school district’s general fund contribution to its behavioral health services will remain the same as in the past. Its behavioral health programs will be supplemented by “Medicaid reimbursements, grant funds, private donations, and district general funds,” Qualman said.

It has yet to be determined whether the district will receive any 1A funding.

Your Hope Center “showed us how school-based therapy can work, and proved there is significant need for the service. We are eternally grateful for the partnership,” Qualman said.

The school district is currently posting jobs for district clinicians and a program supervisor. Current in-school Your Hope Center clinicians are eligible to apply.

As Benway prepares to say goodbye to the nonprofit she has helmed for over five years, she is mindful of the impact Your Hope Center’s services have had in Eagle County. 

“I am honored to have been part of an organization that has provided such needed, critical services in our community, and I am grateful for the team of clinicians that have worked tirelessly to make sure they are meeting the needs,” she said.

Community members in need of Your Hope Center’s crisis services can continue to call 970-306-4673 to receive assistance.

“When someone is experiencing what could be the scariest or most dangerous time in their life, or maybe that of a loved one, they don’t have to call maybe five different numbers,” Bettis said. “They can call one number that is under one system and receive the best patient outcome for them or someone that they love.”