Run the retreat with us. We bring the guests, the money and the follow-through.
ESCAPE's app finds the people and matches them to a trained community member; ESCAPE pays for the stay and carries the 90 days after. You deliver what you are licensed for: the screening, the venue, the housing, the jobs. The first test is one all-inclusive retreat, hosted by an established charity and run by an experienced operator.
- One established nonprofit to host the pilot under its charitable status
- One experienced retreat or support operator with an existing venue
- One clinical partner for screening, oversight and crisis response
- Two or three employment, housing and practical-assistance partners for aftercare
- One independent university or research evaluator
One metropolitan area. One clearly defined adult population. A manageable number of participants.
Who does what, and who is responsible for it.
ESCAPE does not try to do everything itself. It is a support network: ESCAPE arranges and pays, licensed partners deliver, and each layer is responsible for what it is qualified to do.
ESCAPE Connect
What ESCAPE manages directly
- Community relationships and supervised volunteers
- Practical, non-clinical help: housing, work, money, paperwork
- Fundraising, grants and scholarships
- Participant follow-up and coordination
- The app, the matching, and information-sharing agreed in writing
ESCAPE does not independently diagnose, prescribe, provide psychotherapy or run an unsupervised emergency-response service.
Licensed clinical partners
Hospitals, mental-health organizations, licensed professionals
- Clinical assessment and treatment
- Crisis response, within what they are licensed to do
- Deciding when someone needs a higher level of care
ESCAPE keeps its own clinical safety leadership to oversee the quality of referrals, how urgent cases are handed on, and whether partners keep their promises. This reduces the need for a large in-house clinical service. It does not eliminate liability.
The places people stay
Peer-run guest houses, licensed residential mental-health programs
- Run stays for the people they are licensed to serve
- Accept guests who have been screened, with the money confirmed
- Share incident and outcome data
Ordinary hotels and retreats are suitable only for activities that do not require clinical supervision or residential-care licensing.
Where you might fit.
Crisis services
Contracted crisis assessment and response so that an urgent need in the app is never handled by a volunteer alone. We adopt established 988-style standards rather than inventing our own.
Hospitals and behavioral health
Referral networks in both directions: a discharge that needs continuity, and an ESCAPE participant who needs a higher level of care.
Guest houses and residential programs
Voluntary, community-style stays for screened adults. Afiya in Massachusetts, with three private rooms and stays of up to seven nights, is the precedent we study.
Employment and training
Job placement, retraining and workforce reintegration, including employers willing to sponsor pathways back into work.
Housing and financial stability
Housing referrals, transitional accommodation, domestic-violence resources, benefits navigation, nonprofit debt counseling.
Research and evaluation
A university or healthcare institution to assess results independently, define outcome measures, and keep us honest about what the data does and does not show.
- Deliver only within your license, scope and population
- Accept referrals under written criteria you helped define
- Follow the shared emergency rules, with named contacts
- Share incident, outcome and quality data under a data agreement
- Verify credentials and maintain supervision for everyone who touches a participant
- Carry appropriate insurance and agree to incident reporting and termination terms
- Screened, consenting referrals with a funding source confirmed before arrival
- Practical helpers (we call them Navigators) who handle housing, work and paperwork so your clinicians can do clinical work
- Follow-up and community after your service ends, so outcomes hold
- Shared funding: health-system and county contracts, sponsors and our assistance fund
- Independent evaluation you can cite
- A clinical and safety committee with real authority, and a brand people are not afraid to walk through the door of
Paper before people.
Before live operations, every provider relationship is documented and reviewed by healthcare and nonprofit counsel.
Each agreement specifies service scope, licensing and credential verification, referral acceptance, what happens in an emergency, information sharing, insurance, incident reporting and termination rights. HIPAA business associate agreements are used wherever legally required, and the FTC Health Breach Notification Rule is treated as applying unless counsel confirms otherwise.
Provider agreements cover
- Service scope
- Credential verification
- Referral acceptance
- What to do in an emergency
- Information sharing
- Insurance
- Incident reporting
- Termination rights
Written policies on
- Consent
- Volunteer boundaries
- Abuse prevention
- Transportation
- Keeping guests safe from abuse or exploitation
- Data retention
- Incident investigation
- Off-platform contact
Who operates, who pays, who owns the work.
Partnership and funding need a clear deal before anyone chooses a legal structure.
Host nonprofit
- Charitable status, governance, insurance umbrella
- Receives restricted donations and grants for the pilot
- Referrals, trust and grant-writing experience
- Data held under its policies
Retreat operator
- Runs the stay at an existing venue with its own staff
- Paid per group from the pilot budget
- Accountable for on-site care within its scope
- Shares incident and outcome data
ESCAPE
- Brand, program design, intake and follow-up tool
- Coordinates referrals, travel and aftercare
- Owns the brand and product; outcomes data shared with all parties
- Funds aftercare and the practical-help fund
What each partner does, how long it takes, how they are paid, who decides.
| Partner | What you do | Time | Paid | Supervised by | Who decides what |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Host charity | Hold the pilot under your charitable status, insurance and governance; receive earmarked gifts | Light, ongoing; board sign-off at the start and at the review | An agreed fee from the pilot budget | Your board | You can stop the pilot; you do not run it day to day |
| Retreat operator and venue | Run two stays of up to 12 guests with your own staff, meals, activities and house rules | Two stays of two to four weeks, plus set-up | Per group, agreed in advance | Your own management; incidents reported to the clinical director | You decide life on site; you cannot admit or refuse a guest against the clinician's call |
| Clinical and crisis partner | Screen every guest, respond to urgent cases, decide when someone needs a higher level of care | Screening before each stay; on-call cover during stays | Per screening and per on-call period | Your own clinical governance | You decide who is suitable and when someone must leave for care. That decision is final |
| Aftercare partners (housing, work, money, grief) | Deliver the practical step in a guest's plan | Case by case, within the 90 days | Per service, from the practical-help fund | Your own supervision; ESCAPE tracks whether it happened | You decide how to deliver; ESCAPE decides what the fund pays for |
| Independent evaluator | Define the measures, review incidents and results, publish them including what went wrong | Design at the start, review at the end | A fixed fee from the pilot budget | Your institution | You decide what the results say. We do not edit them |
| ESCAPE | Arrange everything, pay, match guests to a support person, carry the 90 days after | Full time through the pilot | From the pilot budget | Host charity's board and the clinical committee | Who is referred where, what the fund pays for, and the standard of the service |
Planned terms. Final responsibilities, fees and supervision are written into each agreement before the first guest travels.
Who it is for. Who is accountable. What happens if someone needs more.
An appealing, non-clinical stay is possible. It is only safe if three things are written down before the first participant travels.
What actually happens on site determines what regulation applies, and that differs by state and by country. We assess it per venue with counsel rather than assuming a wellness label settles it.
Who it is for, and not for
Written eligibility agreed with the clinical partner: adults, screened, not in acute crisis, not needing supervised withdrawal or hospital care. Those people are referred on, with warmth, not turned away.
Who is accountable
A named clinician accountable for screening and for getting urgent help, the operator accountable for on-site care within its scope, the host accountable for governance. Names, not org charts.
What happens if someone needs more
A written route to local medical and emergency care, confirmed before a venue is chosen. An overseas venue is possible only for a screened lower-risk group with that route proven.
A committee with authority, not a famous name on an advisory list.
A standing Clinical and Safety Committee reports to the board, with expertise in suicide prevention, psychiatry or clinical psychology, peer support, privacy and residential-care operations.
Eligibility and referrals
Approves participant eligibility and referral protocols.
Incident review
Reviews safety incidents and corrective actions.
Partner standards
Sets minimum partner qualifications.
Supervision
Oversees clinical staff and volunteer supervision frameworks.
Go, pause or stop
Reviews outcome data and decides whether programs expand, pause or stop.
Programs, durations, and the rebuilding work behind them.
| Program | Duration | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Local Rest | 1 to 7 nights | A short, voluntary break, after a safety check |
| Restore | 2 to 4 weeks | A supported break with structured recovery activities |
| Rebuild | 1 to 3 months | Deeper work on community, work and housing |
| Transition | Ongoing | Follow-up at home and help living independently |
Admission criteria, staffing and durations are designed with clinical partners and conform to local licensing.
A sample participant day
Illustrative only. Participation is voluntary, individualized and compatible with each person's care plan.
- 8:00
- Breakfast and optional gentle movement
- 9:30
- Individual support or scheduled therapy
- 11:00
- Employment, housing or life-planning session
- 12:30
- Community lunch
- 2:00
- Optional activity: art, fitness, gardening or nature
- 4:00
- Personal time and rest
- 6:30
- Dinner and relaxed social time
- 8:00
- Optional group check-in and wind-down
The rebuilding programs
Grief, heartbreak and loneliness
Grief counseling, peer companionship, supportive groups, rebuilding social relationships.
Financial distress
Benefits navigation, debt counseling, employment programs, emergency assistance, realistic budgeting.
Unsafe or unsustainable housing
Housing referrals, domestic-violence resources, transitional accommodation, independent-living support.
Bullying and social isolation
A welcoming community, identity-affirming support, healthy relationships, safe digital boundaries.
Physical and emotional well-being
Optional nutrition support, exercise, clinical mental-health treatment, sleep routines, recreation.
The fresh-start program
New qualifications, mentors, job placements, moving assistance, practical long-term relocation planning.
Individualized services, not guaranteed remedies. Suicide risk arises from interacting psychological, biological, social and environmental factors.
Most pieces exist. The coordinated system does not.
| Organization | Existing offering | What ESCAPE adds alongside it |
|---|---|---|
| 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline | Free crisis calls, text and chat | An ongoing relationship with one person, and practical help with the problem itself |
| 7 Cups | Peer listening and online mental-health support | Continuity, and a route to a supported stay |
| Supportiv | AI-matched, moderated peer support chats | Not a chat product. A named person who stays, a supported stay, and funded aftercare |
| Wildflower Alliance — Afiya | Short stays in a small peer-run house | An integrated app, life-planning services, broader reach |
| US Department of Veterans Affairs — Safety Plan | Digital safety planning and coping tools | A real person, money for practical help, and a place to go |
Afiya shows that voluntary, community-style stays are not just theory. It already exists in a much smaller form. ESCAPE does not need to prove every element is unprecedented. It needs to show that a coordinated experience improves access, continuity and practical outcomes. A 2018 JAMA Psychiatry study found an emergency-department safety-planning intervention with follow-up was associated with 45% fewer suicidal behaviors over six months than usual care. It does not prove ESCAPE will match that. It does justify building structured follow-up in from day one and evaluating it.
Domestic first, close to a hospital network.
Lower-cost international locations are relevant for long-term operations, but distance makes medical continuity, immigration, emergency response, language and safety harder. Default: domestic, close to a hospital network. An existing overseas wellness venue is an option for the first stays only if three conditions hold: an experienced operator, a screened lower-risk group, and a proven route to local medical care. Any venue is named only once it is confirmed.
Pilot shape
- Where
- One city region in one US state
- Who
- Adults only, one clearly defined population
- How many
- Two groups of up to 12, after first offering a free stay to 30 to 60 people to see who says yes
- Partners
- Host nonprofit, operator, clinical partner, 2 to 3 aftercare partners
- Follow-up
- 90 days at home after each stay
- Review
- Independent, at the end of year one, before anything grows
Tell us what you deliver, and where.
We are mapping the first city region now. Early partners help write the referral rules and the emergency rules rather than inheriting them.
- Exploratory, no commitment
- We will share the draft provider agreement and data-sharing terms
- Your details stay local to this preview and are never sold