Project Bloom’s vision is to ensure the mental health and social and emotional well being of Colorado’s young children.

Our mission is to weave family-centered, culturally competent and community based mental health supports and services into a seamless early childhood system of care that promotes health social-emotional development, identifies risk factors, intervenes early, and provides high quality services.

Project Focus

Project Bloom focuses primarily on young children from birth to five years old with serious emotional disturbances (SED) in El Paso, Fremont, and Mesa counties and the city of Aurora. The project will provide enhanced training, integrated delivery of supports and services, statewide working groups focusing on system improvements, and ultimately, sustainable statewide resources for addressing children’s mental health. Although the population of children who will receive services under Project Bloom are those who have SED, the project will have a broader impact by ensuring that there is a true system of care for all children to address prevention and treatment needs.

Project Bloom will build on the seeds for improving mental health in the four communities, including working with each county’s Consolidated Child Care Pilot program to further improve the quality of early childhood care and education (ECE). Project BLOOM will work with diverse partners, including early childhood leaders and educators, mental health centers, departments of human services, employment and training programs and others.

Project Endeavors

• To reduce expulsions from early childhood care and education programs by providing timely, high-quality treatment services
• To increase family access to culturally competent resources and develop model family-involvement practices
• To expand capacity and competency of the early childhood workforce to address mental and behavioral health needs by increasing the depth and breadth of training
• To maximize limited resources for behavioral care of young children, increasing the number of health providers and building community support for mental health services
• To address fragmentation in the current health/mental healthcare systems

BLOOM Partners

Project Bloom is funded from the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), through a partnership of the Colorado Department of Human Services and JFK Partners at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

Partners include Aurora Mental Health, Pikes Peak Mental Health, West Central Mental Health, Colorado West Mental Health Centers, JFK Partners at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Colorado Department of Human Services, the Colorado Children’s Campaign, and the Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health, who are working with a wide range of statewide leaders and organizations including early childhood educators, employment and training programs, the business community and policymakers.

Project Contacts
For more information on Project Bloom, email info@projectbloom.org
Sarah Hoover, M.Ed., Director, Project Bloom
JFK Partners/UCDHSC
4200 E. Ninth Avenue, C234
Denver, CO 80262
(303) 315-2152