News & Events

Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO): Take Your MPP to Work Event

On May 10, 2007, Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, the Honourable George Smitherman attended Ryerson University as part of the RNAO’s 7th annual Take Your MPP to Work event as part of Nursing Week 2007. Mr. Smitherman was presented with the preliminary results of our Community Collaborative Research Project: Understanding the Mental Health Needs of Street-Involved Youth.

The Honourable George Smitherman met with members of the community agencies (Covenant House, Evergreen Centre for Street Youth, Turning Point & Street Outreach Services) as well as a number of street-involved youth themselves. Elizabeth McCay, along with other research associates (including co-investigators: Dr. John Langley of St. Michael’s Hospital and Ryerson University Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing faculty members: Linda Cooper and Heather Beanlands), presented the findings from the street youth project to Mr. Smitherman. The message given to the Health Minister was that despite an exceedingly high level of mental health symptoms and emotional distress, the participants had moderately high levels of self-esteem, resilience, and hope. The results of the study showed that early intervention is the key to assisting street-involved youth as they transition to healthy adulthood.

Read the article featured on the Ryerson Web site News here.

Workshop 2007

On November 30, 2007, a workshop was held with our community and research partners from across the province. Keynote speakers included: Dr. Lynn Rew, School of Nursing,University of Austin at Texas, Dr. Jeff Karabanow School of Social Work, Dalhousie University in Halifax, and Dr. Paula Goering, an expert in policy development, from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Both Dr. Lynn Rew and Dr. Jeff Karabanow shared their research perspectives and ideas for interventions targeted at the mental health needs of street youth.
Key recommendations were developed targeting interventions toward street-involved youth:

1. Improve existing mental health services for this population by creating seamless coordination of available services; Introduce new services for mental health treatment and support; improve access and availability of substance misuse services; Develop best practices for creating interventions for street youth
2. Educate the public regarding the strength and resilience of this population and their mental health needs to help lower stigma; target use of the media as an intermediary
3. Advocate for more consistent funding by developing partnerships in the community, with stakeholders, other researchers, and funding agencies; Develop and strengthen alliances and target specific agencies to meet their criteria for funding

For more information, please see below for the Workshop objectives, agenda, and attendees.  

OBJECTIVES

In order to meet our objectives, could you please ponder the following questions, which will be used to guide the discussion for our day.

Objective #1

To develop an evidenced-based plan for intervention to meet the mental health needs of street-involved youth.

1) Based on your experience and the current state of knowledge in the field, are there programs which are currently meeting the mental health need of street-involved youth?

2) Given that it is important to be able to present “evidence” to policy makers, to what extent is current mental health programming for transitional street youth driven by evidence or best practices?

     3) What are our priorities for intervention designed to meet the mental health needs of street-involved youth? How might we best generate evidence to guide mental health programming for transitional street youth?

Objective # 2

To generate policy recommendations designed to meet the mental health needs of transitional youth.

1. What are current policy directions related to mental initiatives for street-involved youth? What are the implications for the youth and the service agencies?
   
   
2. Based on our current research and the state of knowledge in the field – what should be our key messages to policy/decision makers? What should our story be based on?
   
   
3. Who is our target audience for policy focused initiatives? (i.e. local, provincial or federal ministries, LHINs)
   
   
4. What approaches, methods/tools (i.e. – fact sheets, briefing notes, individual stories) would best convey our message to policy/decision makers?