Frayme Supported Project 

Improving Integrated Care for Youth (IICY) Initiative

Issues 

Canadians agree on the importance of promoting mental well-being and addressing gaps in mental health and addiction services access, treatment and recovery. Evidence suggests that mental health and addiction concerns often begin in childhood and adolescence, and that early diagnosis and intervention is vital to effective treatment and recovery. However, youth in Canada do not receive the mental health and addiction care and services they need, and access to mental health care remains largely disproportionate among different populations, groups, and geographies (Fante-Coleman & Jackson-Best, 2020; Lake & Turner, 2017; Thomson et al., 2015; Veale et al., 2017). Additionally, the current siloed and reactive models of care do not adequately address the holistic health needs of youth with mental health and addiction issues, and there remains a clear disconnect between mental health and physical health services despite evidence of their comorbidity (Lake & Turner, 2017; Ungar et al., 2013). Increasingly, integrated or collaborative health systems are recognized in various countries as a comprehensive and people-centred response to complex and fragmented care delivery (Sheaff & Schofield, 2016).

The IICY Initiative aims to build evidence-informed HSO standards and implementation tools to support networks to in progressing the design, delivery and evaluation of their integrated service networks to improve health and well-being outcomes for people and communities.

Solutions 

The IICY Initiative is working in partnership with youth, families, and communities to test and co-create evidence-based HSO standards and implementation tools that aim to simplify pathways towards mental health and addiction care for youth and their families, including, a best practice standard on integrated youth services, and implementation tool to support a network to understand where they are currently at on their integration journey, and an implementation tool to support networks co-create integrated care pathways for their community in partnership with youth and families.

Impact 

To work with youth, families and communities across Canada to grow sustainable improvements and better outcomes in the integration of community-based mental health and addiction services for youth (10-25 years old) through the co-design, testing and adoption of evidence-based HSO standards and implementation tools that promote integrated care best practices

Details

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