Charlie began working in emergency mental health care in 1990.  He has spent nearly three decades learning to minimize invasive outcomes in mental health intervention, and therefore to reduce cost to the community.  While learning that the keys to success in this goal are clinically excellent care and the very best customer service, Charlie learned that those same values work with doctors, nurses, paramedics, firefighters, law enforcement officers, and all other community partners.  He has trained many dozens of interns and newly-hired crisis workers in compassionate, excellent clinical care and community partnership, advancing to management of two teams and up to sixty staff.

 

In 2014, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) awarded the Boulder County Sheriff's Office a grant to design and implement an early diversion program.  The question: what if community members were offered mental health treatment rather than jail when they were facing charges as a result of their behavioral health issues?  The result was Boulder County’s Project EDGE. 

 

Charlie managed and nurtured Project EDGE from its early development through November of 2017, when he left to form Co-Responder Consulting.  Much was learned through the implementation of the original grant, and Charlie developed a passion for co-response and early diversion. As of this writing, Project EDGE is fully community funded.  

 

Charlie has presented as a speaker three times at Colorado Behavioral Health Council’s annual conference, and has presented on the need for and development of co-responder programs to CIT International’s annual conference.  He has provided initial consultation and speaking engagements to other Colorado counties and municipalities regarding their unique needs in a co-responder program.  At least one of those early presentations resulted in a funded program.  Through other EDGE grants, Charlie has also worked with the Department of Justice, Council of State Governments, and Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Denver Foundation.

 

Charlie has a reputation for excellence in community collaboration, clinical care and supervision, customer service, speaking engagements, and innovative program design. 

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References from Hospitals, Emergency Medical Services, Law Enforcement and Mental Health Administration are all available.

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(Fine print disclaimer: there are rumors that Charlie also once tried to climb a frozen waterfall at 12,000 feet of elevation in sixty-below temperatures, was the original tour guide for Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey, has never broken a bone, has never filed for bankruptcy, was a one-show sound engineer for early hip-hop icons Whodini, owns and operates a full-service recording studio, played a solo performance on the same stage that IceCube took the next evening, is a multi-published magazine author and is rarely seen without a mountain bike on the back of his 4X4 and a fully rigged fly rod on top.  But most of that was a long time ago and is beside the point.)