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.

Working at the system level means focusing on initiatives and improvements involving or affecting these overarching networks, pathways, policies and resources.

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

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.

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.

We’re pleased to be part of the Ontario Youth Suicide Prevention Life Promotion Collaborative. Suicide is the first health-related cause of death amongst young people aged 15 to 24 in Canada, so it’s crucial that we work together to ensure that the service providers and agencies that support our young people have access to the latest evidence-based, practical knowledge to guide their suicide prevention efforts.

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.

One way we’ve worked to bridge knowledge and practice is through the development of quality standards and guidelines that inform the delivery of high-quality child and youth mental health and addictions care and services. See our quality standards page to learn more.

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.

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.