Programs
Two-thirds of our clients exhibit self-destructive behavior and have severe mental illness such as clinical depression, bipolar mood disorder, post-traumatic distress disorder and psychosis. Because this population rarely has access to proper mental health care, problems such as these are often undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. Our comprehensive slate of programs is designed to treat the whole person and to offer individualized treatment plans at every level of need. At a time when many facilities have cut programs due to lack of funding, Denver Children's Home's services are available 24 hours a day, every day.
Residential Services provides care for children in crisis and youth with serious psychiatric disorders and intractable behavioral problems. We offer 24-hour treatment consisting of individual, group and family therapy. In addition, DCH operates a full-time accredited school (Bansbach Academy) so that treatment, academics, recreation and family life can be integrated in a safe and caring environment.
The Day Treatment program offers a combination of on-site schooling and therapy for children who have been struggling and failing in the public school system.
Clinicians in our Intensive In-Home Therapy program help stabilize fractured families overwhelmed with mental health issues, substance abuse, neglect, and physical and emotional abuse. Working with therapists and counselors, the families explore basic interactions and skills such as caring, sharing, controlling anger and taking responsibility for one's own actions.
Denver Children's Home is the lead agency of the East Denver Collaborative (EDC), a Family-to-Family Initiative based on a national program established by the Annie Casey Foundation and adopted by the Denver Human Services Department to strengthen families and communities. Specifically, EDC is designed to develop a positive environment in East Denver where children and their families are supported to thrive and grow. EDC engages in proactive efforts to prevent abuse and neglect and to respect families, their culture and to provide services in the least intrusive manner possible.
Download a Family to Family Referral Form
Sponsored by Nord Family Foundation
Discovery Home offers transitional housing for older youth preparing to graduate from high school and to leave Denver Children's Home. With support and supervision from residential house parents, eight young men form a household. Although many of them have scarcely experienced childhood, Discovery Home enables them to move toward accepting responsibilities of adulthood - attending high school, finding employment, enrolling in college and ultimately becoming self-sufficient.
Sponsored by Daniels Fund & Colorado Health Foundation
Given the prevalence of substance use and its impact on the children and families we serve, it has become critical to address these needs with our clients. The Substance Abuse Program is an educational prevention model designed to provide children the opportunity to openly and honestly address substance use and abuse. Through this process we seek to aid in identification of the reasons for substance use, the personal and social consequences, and development of personal confidence and skills needed to reduce use.
Sponsored by Qwest Employee Fund & JC Penny
The children (ages 6 to 18) in our After School Program are offered a supportive bridge between school and family life between the hours of 3:30 and 7:30 p.m., allowing them to remain in their own neighborhood public school while participating in treatment. Our overall goal is to help these children develop the skills and confidence to succeed in school, make friends and cope with their often difficult home life.
Sponsored by John G. Duncan Trust
The Bansbach Academy is housed within Denver Children's Home. Teachers focus on individual needs and learning styles with an emphasis on positive reinforcement, patience and acceptance. Many of our students have long histories of school failure, and many have undiagnosed learning disabilities, which are compounded by emotional or behavioral problems. Bansbach Academy provides a successful and safe academic experience where students can learn new skills designed to promote future school success.
The Bansbach Academy is fully accredited by the North Council Association Commission of Accreditation and School Improvement (NCA-CASI).
Experiential TherapiesSponsored by Hunt Alternatives Fund: 3rd Generation, ECA Foundation and Gary-Williams Employee Fund
Denver Children's Home (DCH) has strengthened our experiential therapy programs including art, yoga, music, recreation and pet therapies. Built on a body of research that suggests "talk" therapy alone is not sufficient to treat abused and traumatized adolescents, the goal of the Experiential Therapy programs is to regulate the level of excitement through creative expression and help them overcome difficulty building safe, trusting relationships, and accurately communicating their emotions.
Music Therapy specifically, provides a healing influence to counteract depression and psychological stress for our children. In our second year of offering music therapy, 34 DCH clients received this form of treatment. Several positive results have been observed among the clients. Amongst these are an increase in motivation and volition in the older males. Related to this is an increase of self-esteem and experience practicing patience. Younger clients have experienced more interpersonal and relational effects. This has been primarily experienced as positive social interactions, increased eye contact, sharing of feelings and a decrease in nervous reactivity.
Click the post-it note at the top of our website to listen to the music and poetry player!
Sponsored by Hunt Alternatives Fund: 3rd Generation
Members of Flobots, a Denver local hip-hop band, have offered their musical expertise, time and heart to the children of Denver Children's Home. Through a series of ongoing workshops, Flobots members teach guitar, violin, voice, lyrcisim, and recording. Due to the generous funding of Hunt Alternatives Fund, the healing influences of music are daily counteracting depression and psychological stress for our children.
Sponsored by ECA Foundation and Gary-Williams Employee Fund
Built on a body of research that suggests "talk" therapy alone is not sufficient to treat abused and traumatized adolescents, the goal of the Experiential Therapy programs is to regulate the level of excitement through creative expression and help them overcome difficulty building safe, trusting relationships, and accurately communicating their emotions.
Borrowing on this research and recommendations, Lila Yoga (a Vinyasa form of Hatha Yoga elaborated by Erica Kaufman, MFA, E-RYT) was proposed. Its focus on meditation in movement is particularly helpful in helping traumatized individuals better regulate their level of emotion, while also gaining mindfulness skills. Since it's inplementation in 2005, the DCH Therapeutic Yoga program continues to provide over 25 hours a month of yoga therapy.
Sponsored by Betsy Duffner Memorial Fund, ECA Foundation and Gary-Williams Employee Fund
The Art Therapy Program helps at-risk youth access their own creativity to enhance self awareness, foster self-esteem and develop communication, socialization and problem solving skills. Most of the children at DCH have suffered abuse, neglect and trauma and have difficulty accurately identifying, expressing and communicating their emotions, thoughts and feelings through traditional verbal therapy. Therefore, they greatly benefit from experiential therapy, which allows them to build relationships through nonverbal participatory expression.
Sponsored by ECA Foundation and Gary-Williams Employee Fund
At Denver Children's Home we recognize the value of a healthy lifestyle and how an active lifestyle helps our children heal and mature. Therapeutic recreation is an important part of our holistic approach to treatment.
Evidence-Based Treatment Models
Many of the youth who are placed at Denver Children's Home have been placed as a result of impulsive behaviors, difficulty regulating and dealing with their own emotions, self destructive or suicidal behaviors, and difficulties in relationships with others. Evidence-based treatment and prevention practices are those that research has proved effective. Denver Children's Home has adopted these proven practices.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) teaches clients to identify emotional difficulties while teaching them more positive and effective coping skills. DBT has been successful in increasing motivation and decreasing self-defeating and self destructive behaviors. Through a focus on teaching and reinforcing adaptive skills, it enhances a sense of efficacy, something many of the youth have not experienced in their life. DBT is a cognitive behavioral treatment which is solution focused. It teaches clients to accurately express emotions, communicate pain effectively and safely, tolerate distress, and to solve difficult daily struggles.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is often referred to as trauma-based therapy. It is primarily been applied to individuals who have been psychologically traumatized. That means it is effective with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), as well as anxiety and depression related to psychological trauma. EMDR enhances therapists' ability to help children become empowered to make choices to overcome self-defeating beliefs structures, and most importantly to reclaim the joy of childhood innocence.
Motivational Interviewing is a client-centered, directive method for enhancing intrinsic motivation to change by exploring and resolving ambivalence.
