Our Work
We come together to support the well-being of children, youth and their families, through collaboration and informed planning.
How and Why we chose our current Priorities
In June 2022, Table Agency leaders met with Erik Lockhart to set priorities for a two-year work plan. After reviewing the previous plan and conducting an environmental scan, they identified four key priorities for the Children and Youth Planning Table Hastings and Prince Edward:
Priority# 1: Draft Infant-child mental health strategy and the development of a pathway for each community.
Goal: Identify children at risk early so that trajectories are changed, with universal cost savings.
Priority# 2: Develop referral pathways and navigation improvements for youth (e.g. agency awareness and pathway creation).
Goal: Better agency awareness so that organizations can more seamlessly help youth.
Priority# 3 : Provide concurrent substance use and addictions services for youth under 16 including process addictions, technology, substances, violence and pornography.
Goal: The creation of a sustainable, community-wide service that reduces harmful addictions.
Priority# 4: Develop innovative solutions within our current systems by agencies coming together to problem solve.
Goal: Implementation of a process to address recurring, complex situations that require multi-agency collaboration.
Together, we felt that we all had the collective motivation, energy and determination to make a difference in these four priority areas.
After a few meetings together, discussing Priority #2, we determined that we did not want to duplicate services or efforts and decided that if all agencies committed to updating and keeping our information updated on the 211 site, this goal could be met. We then concentrated our efforts on the three remaining priorities.
At the same time, we realized that, while we had achieved significant progress in the past, we had not adequately documented our strategies, efforts, or outcomes in a way that clearly demonstrated the impact we were making. Recognizing this gap, we sought a methodology to track and communicate our work and its effects on the community. This led us to adopt the Results-Based Accountability (RBA) framework.
We have now trained over 200 community members in RBA, and our Planning Table committees have begun organizing their work around data and measurable outcomes. As a result, we have developed a multi-agency scorecard for each priority area, reflecting the commitments each agency has made and the goals we aim to achieve together.