In recent years, we moved away from providing on-demand services at the organizational level to increase our ability to focus on changes required at the system level to break down barriers to better care and strengthen services system-wide.

Why system-level initiatives matter

There's a crisis in our healthcare system stemming from undiagnosed or unaddressed mental health or addictions struggles in children and young people. This is compounded by the challenges many families face in navigating the system of services. Working closely with the Ministry of Health, provincial partners and service providers, we can leverage our collective expertise to improve care. This means better experiences and outcomes for more children, young people and families, better overall health and better value.

What do we mean by “system-level initiatives”?

Ontario's child and youth mental health and addictions system is complex. It’s made up of many providers and organizations from different sectors, all delivering mental health and addictions services to children and young people. The system also includes the networks and care pathways that connect the various providers and care settings, as well as the governments and other institutions that make policies and provide resources.

System-level initiatives are activities and improvements involving or affecting the overarching networks, pathways, policies and resources, in addition to activities or improvements within individual organizations.

Visit our care pathways page to better understand what care pathways are and how they help.

Working with government

We're a trusted partner of the Ministry of Health, collaborating regularly on system-level initiatives.

BI Solution

When the Ministry began working to implement a Business Intelligence (BI) Solution for Ontario's child and youth mental health service providers, we were brought on board to develop and lead efforts to train agency staff on how to use the platform.

The BI Solution is a technological tool that provides a common performance measurement framework for Ontario's child and youth mental health and addictions system. It's meant to improve data collection and reporting for community-based services and make the resulting information available to inform resource allocation, system planning and service delivery. Visit our resource hub to access relevant training modules and data sharing agreement templates.

Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program

We are a member of the Ontario Structured Psychotherapy Program's family, child and youth subcommittee, providing support for engagement and knowledge gathering.

Announced as part of the province's mental health investments in late 2017, this program makes Ontario the first province to provide publicly funded structured psychotherapy to help people with mild to moderate anxiety and depression — the most common mental health disorders in Ontario. The program was created in response to recommendations made by the Mental Health and Addictions Leadership Advisory Council and was developed with mental health experts, service providers and people with lived experience.

Working with service providers

We work strategically with community-based child and youth mental health and addictions service providers across the province to align our efforts and produce the best possible outcomes for children, young people and families.

Supporting the Lead Agency Consortium and Community of Practice

We help facilitate and support the work of the Child and Youth Mental Health Lead Agency Consortium and Community of Practice. Together, we identify provincial priorities in child and youth mental health, and we collaborate to address them.

Setting quality standards

One way we’ve worked to bridge knowledge and practice is through the development of quality standards and guidelines based on the best available evidence. Since 2018, we’ve worked with young people, families, clinicians and researchers from all over Ontario to co-develop and implement the quality standard for youth engagement, the quality standard for family engagement and the quality guideline for virtual walk-in services.

Supporting young people: Good2Talk

Good2Talk is a free, confidential service for post-secondary students in Ontario. Callers can access anonymous professional counselling, as well as information and referrals for mental health and addictions services.

We’re one of four organizations behind Good2Talk, which is funded by the Ontario Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development. We lead the evaluation component and develop training resources for Good2Talk staff.

Supporting collaboration between schools and agencies

We partnered with the Lead Agency Consortium, School Mental Health Ontario (SMH-ON) and Children’s Mental Health Ontario (CMHO) to develop a foundational resource to support an integrated system of care between the education and child and youth mental health and addictions sectors.