Antelope Recovery, a behavioral health provider for teens, has received opioid settlement funds from Colorado to expand its Spanish-speaking services in the state.
Antelope Recovery offers mental health and substance use disorder treatment at the outpatient and intensive outpatient levels, with a special focus on criminal justice-involved teens. The latest funding will also be used to develop additional programming specific to the challenges these youth face, focusing on gang dynamics, criminogenic risk and recidivism reduction.
Shelby Robbins, co-founder and CEO of Antelope, felt compelled to do something after working as a program manager at a residential treatment program for kids in Colorado. These programs are for children who need 24/7 care, “who couldn’t be living at home, but also shouldn’t be living in a hospital,” Robbins noted. Over time, these programs have all but shrunk or shuttered in the state, per Robbins.
The situation got so dire that in 2021, a federal class-action lawsuit was filed alleging the state lapsed in its duty to provide mental healthcare to needy kids. Due to a lack of residential treatment beds, some have had to rely on hospitals while others have run away and were reported missing.
The residential treatment center Robbins worked at closed during COVID-19, and attempts to find new placement for kids proved futile. “We couldn’t find anything,” Robbins recalled. “We started Antelope at first as a hope to support higher acuity teams and having a virtual option for care.”
From there, Antelope expanded. As Robbins and her co-founders dug deeper, they found “the justice system was kind of the default option for care.” Juvenile centers and probation officers were picking up the slack created by the strained healthcare system. They were also commonly involved when kids got caught with drugs. “Often the first people who know that the teen has a problem at all are people who work in the justice continuum,” Robbins noted.
It’s why Antelope broadened its focus to serve justice-involved youth. Founded in 2022, Antelope currently operates in Colorado, working with all 23 judicial districts that span diversion programs, probation and juvie detention. Early treatment for teens using substances is particularly important to prevent them from becoming more deeply involved in the criminal justice system, Robbins said.
“Our goal is instead of having a punitive response be the only response, can we also do a mental health evaluation and recommend treatment based on that evaluation,” Robbins said. On average, Antelope does three to six different assessments for each teen before creating a treatment plan.
The program is 12 weeks long, with an average of 12 hours a week with each family. Antelope starts by addressing any trauma, common in the population, using a framework known as the ARC model. Long-term, providers aim to get youth re-engaged in work and school.
While it’s rare for family members to be involved in treatment, those who are may have a weekly meeting with Antelope providers. Antelope also has a weekly parent group and resource videos on things like harm reduction and safe firearm storage.
Some teens will inevitably need a higher level of care than what Antelope provides. The problem is there’s almost nowhere to send them, Robbins said. There is only one detox program in the entire state that works with teens, for example. Antelope does its best to coordinate referrals for in-network care, she said, but most of the time it’s just not possible. “We do what we can to manage safety and risk for those kids,” Robbins said, but they may relapse or run into the justice system.
Antelope plans to expand to the Four Corners region of New Mexico within the next six months. It expects to have a hospital partner in the state, which has 8,000 teens coming through its ED for behavioral health issues every year and, similar to Colorado, has no community services for ongoing treatment. Many of these youth come from the neighboring Navajo Nation reservation, which has some of the most acute health risks in the U.S., even relative to other Indigenous groups. Its residents see high rates of poverty, language barriers and other challenges.
This year, Antelope is participating in a residency program with Headstream, an accelerator and entrepreneur support program for founders building youth mental health solutions. Through the program, Antelope hopes to expand its services to include medication management. For now, it works with psychiatrists in Colorado for those who need prescriptions.
In Colorado, most of Antelope’s business comes from Medicaid. The rest is either funded through the justice system, commercial payers, or safety net entities covering uninsured and undocumented youth. The state’s complex funding dynamics have led to stakeholder tension, per Robbins. “There’s been a lot of conflict between the safety net providers and the justice system,” she said. “It really can blur the lines of who’s owning healthcare services for these teens.”