Our Purpose
The Safe & Healthy Spokane Task Force is a community-led initiative committed to recommending priority actionable strategies that enhance public safety, support and improve behavioral health, and strengthen system coordination across Spokane County.
Mission
Develop priority, actionable, data-informed, community-driven recommendations
Focus
Enhance public safety, support behavioral health, strengthen system coordination
Deliverable
A data-informed, community driven action plan delivered to regional elected leaders in late Spring of 2026
Announcements
Safe and Healthy Spokane Task Force Releases Community-Built Recommendations
On June 11, 2026, the Safe and Healthy Spokane Task Force released its recommendations, delivering a community-built roadmap to transform the Spokane region's approach to public safety and behavioral health.
The Task Force came together because a different kind of table was needed. Over nine months, more than 35 people representing law enforcement, the courts, behavioral health, healthcare, housing, business, labor, Tribal nations, faith communities, and people with lived experience worked through real disagreement to produce a shared roadmap — one that builds on years of hard work by people who have cared about these issues long before this Task Force convened.
The 14 recommendations span facilities, crisis response, diversion, treatment, workforce, and coordination. They are designed to work together. A safer community and a healthier one are not separate goals, and a system that treats them that way will keep producing the same results. These recommendations are built around an integrated approach where safety and health are interdependent.
The foundational recommendation is to create a Cross-Sector Coordinating Council. This council is at the heart of the region's ability to sustain collaboration and better integrate systems across jurisdictional boundaries, so progress can be made on the shared issues that no single government or community can solve alone.
This work does not end with the release of these recommendations. The Task Force members who produced this roadmap are committed to staying engaged as it moves toward implementation, and they are asking elected leaders across the region to meet this moment with the sustained commitment it requires.
Advisory Committees: Moving the Work Forward
The Safe and Healthy Spokane Task Force is advancing its work through four community-led Advisory Committees.
WANT TO GET INVOLVED IN THE WORK?
The Safe & Healthy Spokane Task Force has created an easy way for people to opt into different levels of involvement.
Assessment of Spokane County’s behavioral health, homelessness, crisis response, and justice systems
Authored by the Leifman Group, Leifman Group, the report offers a community-wide assessment of existing strengths, gaps, and opportunities, along with a practical roadmap for coordinated action and impact