Your Hope Center, the Eagle County Nonprofit Launched to Address a Community Mental Health Crisis, Will Close in June—Services Will Continue
Your Hope Center, the Eagle County organization founded in 2018 to address the local mental health crisis, will dissolve at the end of June due to various factors, including financial limitations and regulatory changes at the state level.
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.
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.
“This transition doesn’t mean any of our services are ending. Clinicians who were working Sunday as Your Hope Center clinicians were working Monday as Vail Health employees,” 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.
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.
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.”
