
Ontario Caregiver 24/7 Support Helpline
1-833-416-2273
Helping Children and Teens Through Mental Health Challenges
Top Canadian child and adolescent psychiatrists, Pier Bryden and Peter Szatmari, break down the stigma of mental health illness and walk parents through the warning signs, risk factors, prevention strategies and the process of diagnosis and treatment for mental health challenges arising from anxiety, depression, psychosis, suicidal thoughts and behaviours, substance use disorders and many other mental health challenges.
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Report: Measurement & Evaluation: Case Studies & Key Insights
Learn about five case studies of co-designed change initiatives. Read More
Report: Lessons from Changing Care Sustainability and Spread of Change Initiatives
View practical tips that the Changing CARE projects learned along their journey of co-designing change.
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Tool: Engagement & Co-design Inventory of Resources
Co-design and engagement are key ingredients to advancing meaningful change. This inventory is designed to support individuals and organizations as they build their capacity for engagement and co-design.
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Mental Illness Caregivers’ Association moves 20 year fundraiser to a virtual platform
Welcome to Mica’s Virtual Art in the Park. No One Walks Alone, We Walk With You.
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Grow a Strong Family
It takes courage, strength, resiliency and resources to keep our families strong in the face of addictions and mental illness. Grow a Strong Family is a US website that provides education, support and resources for families uprooted by mental illness and helps them to rebuild and thrive.
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Ontario Caregivers and BounceBack
We have the support you need
It is important that caregivers support their own mental and physical health to ensure they can provide meaningful care to others.
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Patient and Family Engagement in Primary Care
Building effective patient and family advisory councils in three Ontario communities
The Change Foundation Case Study Primary Care
PCORI – The Value of Engagement
In PCORI-funded research, patients and other healthcare stakeholders are equitable partners—as opposed to research subjects—who leverage their lived experience and expertise to influence research to be more patient centered, relevant, and useful. Their early and continued involvement throughout a study can lead to greater use and uptake of research results by patients and stakeholders within the healthcare community.
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Patient Experience Journal, Volume 6, Issue 1 – 2019
Twelve principles to support caregiver engagement
in health care systems and health research
Family and friend caregivers (i.e., unpaid carers) play a critical role in meeting the needs of people across various ages and illness circumstances. Caregiver experiences and expertise, which are currently overlooked, should be considered in practice (such as designing and evaluating services) and when designing and conducting research. In order to improve the quality of health care we need to understand how best to meaningfully engage caregivers in research, policy and program development to fill this important gap. Our study aimed to determine principles to support caregiver engagement in practice and research. A pan Canadian meeting brought together 48 stakeholders from research, policy and practice and lived experience (caregivers) to share perspectives on caregiver engagement and co-design.
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Using collaboration to take on complex community health issues and create social change
Working with a CAMH librarian, we explored the following academic databases: Pub Med; PsychINFO; scholar’s portal; Cochrane Systematic Reviews; and Google Scholar. We looked for articles published between 2007 and 2017. Key search terms included “community collaboration,” “inter-agency collaboration,” “inter-organizational collaboration,” “systems change,” and “systems transformation.” We gave priority to systematic reviews as well as well-known and respected articles on the
subject, as indicated by the number of times cited.
Rapid Review_Collaboration
The Alzheimer Society is Canada
A Guide for Implementing Person and Family-Centred Care Education across Health Care Organizations
In this toolkit, we have documented our planning, implementation and evaluation experiences and lessons learned to assist other health care organizations to implement and sustain PFCC initiatives and support a shift towards a more person and family centred approach to care.
Click here to review the document.
Connected Care Update
Announcement of Advisor on Public Health and Emergency Health Services Consultations
Click Here to read more.
Click Here to receive Connected Care Updates.
Mental Health Commission of Canada
Government Engagement ToolKit
This toolkit is intended to support individuals, groups, or organizations in their efforts to secure government support in developing and delivering mental health services. Even if there is an awareness of the potential benefits of engaging governments, making the connections necessary to successfully secure government support can be a daunting task. This kit provides the strategies, guides, and tools that can be used to ensure that groups are best equipped in this endeavour.
Individuals familiar with the resources herein will be better prepared to connect with the most appropriate government leaders, policy-makers, and support staff and communicate most effectively in terms that will provide the best arguments for governments to support their proposals.
Click Here to review the PDF Toolkit.
Canadian Mental Health Association
Family Outreach & Response Program (FOR)
Who are FOR services for?
Any family member or friend, living in the city of Toronto, supporting someone experiencing a mental health issue, regardless of whether or not they have received a diagnosis or are connected with the mental health system.
Click Here to learn more about FOR Programs and Services.
The Change Foundation Toolkit
A toolkit designed to help organizations use co-design to improve the caregiver experience. This toolkit includes tools, resources, reports and learnings which are updated on a regular basis.
To review the toolkit click here
Health Standards Ontario Client and Family Information Sheet
The New Virtual Health Standard
This standard provides guidelines of excellence for organizations participating in virtual health services to improve the safety, quality and effectiveness of virtual health services.
Read this Information Sheet
The Rights of The Family Caregiver
The Rights of the Family Caregiver poster has been developed by the EMBRACE project for the Cornwall Hospital’s Community Addiction and Mental Health Services.
To view the poster in English Click Here French Click Here
The Importance of Empathy
We all are familiar with the benefits of feeling empathy, both for ourselves and for those who we are connecting with. This VIDEO is a great reminder why empathy is fundamental to our well being and provides an easy to understand teaching tool about the importance of empathy.
Quality Standard for Youth Engagement
Youth engagement can occur along a continuum and across three levels.28
Youth engagement at the level of personal care and health decisions is focused on the relationship between youth and healthcare professionals and improving health outcomes for children, youth and families. Engagement within an organization is focused on improving programs and services or improving organizational policies and governance. Engagement at the system level is focused on improvements beyond a single organization.
draft_youth_engagement_quality_standard
Centre of Excellence of Partnership with Patients and Public
A helpful resource for evidence-based engagement practices to assist stakeholders to better understand the key conditions for success needed for such engagement initiatives involving patient and families.
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Family Caregiver Community of Interest
A repository of articles and research on Family Caregiver
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Institute for Patient and Family Centred Care
A Checklist for Attitudes About Patients and Families as Advisers Medical