Douglas County, Children’s Colorado launch youth mental health crisis service

Douglas County parents may soon have one less scramble when a child is in mental health crisis: county leaders approved a new partnership with Children’s Hospital Colorado to expand crisis stabilization services for children and teens at the South Campus in Highlands Ranch. The county is using $3.4 million from Region 12 Douglas County Opioid Council settlement funds to help build a pediatric mental health emergency unit adjacent to the emergency department.

The move gives the county a concrete response to a problem that has been building for years. Children’s Hospital Colorado declared a youth mental health “state of emergency” in May 2021, and later that year said anywhere from 15 to 40 kids in crisis were coming into its emergency departments each day in September, often waiting a long time for placement. In 2025, the hospital said a poll found 70% of Colorado voters believed the state was facing a youth mental health crisis.

The new service will be based at Children’s Hospital Colorado South Campus, which already offers urgent care and 24/7 emergency care for kids in one location. That matters for families in Highlands Ranch, Castle Rock, Parker, Lone Tree, Castle Pines, Littleton, Greenwood Village, Englewood and Centennial, along with unincorporated parts of Douglas County, where the nearest crisis option can shape what happens in the first hour of an emergency.

Douglas County and its municipalities make up Region 12 under Colorado’s statewide opioid settlement framework, and the Douglas County Opioid Council leads the local effort to spend those dollars on prevention, treatment, recovery and long-term wellness. County documents say the contract covers expansion of crisis stabilization services for children and youth and that Children’s Colorado will engage qualified professionals for architectural, engineering, construction and related work.

For county commissioners, the agreement puts opioid settlement money into a service that can be touched, staffed and used by local families instead of leaving the funds in a broad category of behavioral-health promises. Douglas County has already committed more than $6 million in American Rescue Plan Act money to mental and behavioral health programming, and the South Campus expansion shows that the county is still treating youth mental health as a public-safety and human-services issue with real infrastructure attached.

The project surfaced publicly in a May 19, 2026 work-session agenda before the county announced it June 11, 2026. With the South Campus already serving the south metro area, the new unit is designed to make crisis care more immediate and more local the next time a Douglas County family needs help fast.