STAR Program Expanding to Meet Demand for Services

The Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) program, Denver's widely lauded alternative emergency response initiative that pairs an EMTs with clinicians, will expand to meet the large demand for its services. "STAR is key to achieving Denver’s goal of providing the right response at the right time to people in crisis," says Emily Williams, a spokesperson for the Denver Department of Housing Stability.

At its April 3 meeting, Denver City Council voted to spend approximately $2.5 million to expand STAR to add six EMTs and three additional vans. Once implemented, those increases will bring the STAR van fleet to ten and the number of total STAR pairings to sixteen. With even more vans and teams, the city says, STAR will be able to respond to calls at all hours of the day and night, every day of the year.

"Eventually, our goal is to fully meet the demand, which includes providing service 365 days per year, 24 hours per day, and to be able to connect the folks STAR makes contact with to culturally, geographically and linguistically appropriate services," says Williams.

The new, $2.5 million contract is with Denver Health. In January, the council approved spending another $885,986 on a contract amendment with WellPower to hire six new behavioral health clinicians to work on STAR teams.

Denver launched STAR in June 2020 — coincidentally, just as protesters were taking to Denver's streets, demanding racial justice and police accountability. The goal of STAR, which was a joint project created by the Denver Police Department and community advocates, has always been to reduce the number of unnecessary interactions between cops and the public by sending trained, non-law-enforcement city staffers on crisis calls that don't merit a police response.

"This frees up police resources to focus on safety concerns, and the person in distress can get the care they need directly," Williams notes.

And STAR has received plenty of plaudits, with many mayoral candidates lauding the program.

STAR, which currently sends out vans from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., analyzed its work halfway through 2022, and the results were promising. Through the first six months of that year, STAR responded to 2,837 calls for service, which are routed through 911.

"The team has never had to call for backup due to a safety issue. These calls would have otherwise been dispatched to police or EMS and were more appropriately handled by a civilian team who were able to provide resource connection or crisis intervention," the study notes.

The most common calls involved welfare checks, trespassing, a suicidal person or some other need for assistance.

The study also determined that STAR could have responded to more than twice as many calls, or a total of 5,891, during this same period if the program had enough resources to do so.

"Since it was piloted in 2020, we’ve been able to grow the program so that teams can respond to calls all over the city, not just in the downtown area, and have expanded the hours of operation," says Williams. "As part of the expansion plan, we’re also working to improve referral and follow-up services."