About

Ariel Clinical Services is a Colorado nonprofit serving communities across the state, with two primary sides to its work. Our Child and Family Services team supports children, youth, and families through foster care, adoption, therapy, mentoring, and family time. Our Adult Services team supports adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) at home, at work, and in how they spend their days.

Because we do both, we can stay with someone from childhood into adulthood. For a young person growing up in our foster care program, turning 18 doesn’t have to mean starting over with a new agency and a new set of people. The support can carry straight through. Read how that worked for Tessa.

We’re licensed by the State of Colorado as a Child Placement Agency (CPA) for foster care and adoption. We’re also a Program Approved Service Agency (PASA), which means the state has approved us to provide Medicaid-funded services for people with I/DD.

Every program at Ariel does something different, and all of them share a way of working.

It starts with getting to know the whole person, well beyond the part of their life that brought them to us. That includes the relationships that matter, from the third-grade teacher who still checks in to the coworker who saves a seat at lunch. It includes the details that make someone who they are: the music that helps them wind down, the bowling league they’d never miss, the way they like their mornings to go. And it includes what they want next, whether that’s a first job, a return home, or a place of their own. Support gets built around those things, and it changes as the person does.

It also means the people supporting someone talk to each other. A day program coach can tell a residential provider what worked that afternoon. A case manager can bring a foster parent and a birth parent to the same table. When someone moves from one program to another, the people who already know them help with the handoff, so the new team can pick up where the last one left off.

And we want people to enjoy being part of Ariel, whether they come to us for services, open their home, or work on our team. You can see it in the pride of the Members (the adults we serve) whose volunteer work earned them and Ariel a volunteer agency of the year award from Food Bank of the Rockies, and in the foster families and residential providers who have been with us for years, some for decades. For the people we serve, it all adds up to support that fits the life each person wants to live.

Every program carries this in its own way. On each program page, you’ll find three words for what stands out most there, though no three words could say it all. You’ll see them as you explore Adult Services, Child and Family Services, and the programs within each.

Looking for support for a child, a family, or an adult with I/DD? Start with Child and Family Services or Adult Services, or reach out to the office nearest you.

Foster parents, residential providers, and group center owner-operators do the daily work of care, with our team behind them. Learn about becoming a foster parent, a residential provider, or a group center owner-operator.

Whether you’re drawn to working with children and families or with adults with I/DD, there’s a place for you here, from direct support to therapy to case management. See careers at Ariel, our benefits, and open positions.

Donations go to the extras that make life fuller for the people we serve: a season on a sports team, art supplies or music lessons, more training for foster parents and residential providers, and holiday gifts for children and families. Make a donation online, or reach out if you have another kind of gift in mind.

You can also support Ariel with your next coffee or cookie order. Our social enterprises give Members and others facing barriers to work paid jobs and real skills, and every sale helps keep them going.

Fresh-baked cookies with a cause, made with help from Members learning job skills. 

Order cookies

A Grand Junction coffee shop where adults with I/DD, and parents and teens facing barriers to work, build job skills one cup at a time.

Visit Perdita’s

Our food truck, where Members learn every part of the job, from the grill to the register, while serving customers around Grand Junction.

Find the truck