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Do you work in a collaborative environment, where connections between sectors, initiatives or services is an ongoing part of your everyday work? How do you maintain these partnerships and collaborations? Please feel free to share your best-practice in engaging and collaborating with other initiatives, sectors or services. 

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Fortunately, system partners are increasingly recognizing the need for a genuinely collaborative approach. In Durham Region, the Concurrent Disorders Network has provided a multi-sectoral system of linkages to enhance broad system planning and maximize opportunities for shared learning and integrated treatment/program planning. We have a long standing regional CD Charter and Consensus Document that we recently revised (April 2012) to embrace the broader Central East region. The Network members are leaders from multiple sectors and there is a Capacity Building Table comprised of front line clinicians that can share their experience of system barriers and successful collaborations. Consumer representation on the Network has also provided a key informative guide for service providers. I am very interested in how this work is being done in other regions and opportunities to share knowledge, experiences and resources.

Thanks Jason!

I am very fortunate to be a long-standing member of this dynamic TAMI Coalition. This is another example of a cross-system collaborative effort. The partnership - which includes community treatment, hospital based services, school boards and, most importantly, community members with lived experiences - enables us to reach so many youth, school staff and community members. You can check out our website at www.tamidurham.ca

Hi Allison,

 

Great to hear of your coalition, a few questions from a front liner who has interest in policy and how it gets operationalized. Essentially I am wondering if the coalition has linkages and better still alignments with higher levels of government like - municipalities and provincial departments.  

 

While the mental health commission outlines strategic directions 4.1 -improving mental health a goal when working to enhance overall living conditions of people/health outcomes and 6.1 -Coordinate mental health policies across governments, across sectors it seems early days indeed for interministerial coordination.  For example:  A city like Ottawa, has social services - in some kind of devolution/budget cut scenario between the province and city-- which ends up cutting "theraputic bus passes" for people living in domiciliary hostels.  

 

It actually gets quite complex, how disability is managed, but the plan is somehow to get Ministry of Health to pay for them via one of their supplemental programs (highly medicalized and proceedural). It seems that up the lines of government, it will be getting more fractured and siloed.  We have a local social service department and provincial ministries saying transportation is a health issue, rather than an citizen access issue, or a financial issue when obviously it is highly inter-related.  

 

Do you see hope or actual steps on your end that levels of government will be able to ensure continuity of access?  I also wonder in our targeted specialization or focus on mental health we will lose the quiet benefits and I believe efficiency of universal access, but I suppose that is another topic.

 

I am really interested in this thread. I especially appreciated the way you put it, Bill: "policy and how it gets operationalized"

 

Nipissing District has initiated a number of collaborative service models both within and outside of the mental illness and addictions sectors over the past 10 years. These have included everything from pooling resources to fulfill service needs in a rural community to the creation of a common referral triage system and community response process to address to homelessness issues. All of these initiatives came about because of grassroots initiatives and necessity. There was no money to be had and there were still clients who needed to be served so agencies and services worked together to fill the gaps.

 

I believe there are some outstanding, promising practices in existence that approach service gaps and service provision from a collaborative, needs-based perspective. I am, however, feeling more frustrated of late. I hear the words "partnering", "collaboration", and "integration" more and more, but what I see is more and more siloed planning and splitting between the mental health and addictions sectors and especially between the hospitals and treatment centres and community services. Maybe I'm too jaded after over 20 years working in the sectors. I just think we keep spending money on trying to develop new and better models rather than putting resources into the enhancement and development of proven models already in existence. If we all separately look only at ways to work with someone’s addictions or their mental illness symptoms or financial needs, we waste time and resources and will consistently set the service recipient up for failure. We would probably be more successful if we planned our collaborative efforts working from a model that uses Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as its vision. Someone who has no home or food is not likely to be able to spend a lot of time or effort working on beating an addiction.

 

Bill's comments about the challenges we are all going to face as social assistance is downloaded to municipalities are incredibly pertinent. Provincially provided social supports, no matter how convoluted with rules and regulations, provide consistency for recipients no matter where they live. All one has to do is look at all the inconsistencies that have always existed when looking at "discretionary" benefits. In some municipalities, dentures were covered and in others, they weren't. In some places people could get funding for bus passes or an honorarium each moth for volunteering, in others they couldn't. Rural areas, with no tax base can't afford what places that have expensive homes and large populations can afford but we are heading into a world where have and have-not is going to refer to what district we live in, and people will move from district to district to follow the benefits rather than the jobs. It's pretty scary. I learned this morning that the ODSP computer data system is being revamped again at who knows what cost for training and software. It has been changed at least three times within my memory, and each time its costs have been huge in both money and the stresses it cause to both service recipients and providers.

 

I believe one of the most important collaborations we can promote will be that of having one voice when it comes to advocating for the people we serve. We need a strong, comprehensive continuum of consistent, high quality services available to people when they need them and we need to work together to make that happen. Sorry. I didn’t mean to sermonize. It’s been a long day.

 

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