A Provincial Health Equity Strategy
Growing Together:
Advancing Health Equity in Ontario’s Community Child and Youth Mental Health System
CMHO is proud to launch its first-ever Provincial Health Equity Strategy, “Growing Together: Advancing Health Equity in Ontario’s Community Child and Youth Mental Health System”—a foundational framework developed through engagement with members, youth, families, and partners across the community-based child and youth mental health sector.
Rooted in anti-racism, anti-oppression, and equity principles, this strategy outlines a shared path forward for building a more just and inclusive system—one that better reflects and serves the diversity of Ontario’s infants, children, and youth. The strategy also advances key commitments from CMHO’s new Strategic Plan and affirms that our sector is both ready and able to lead quality improvement in equity.
Why now?
This strategy arrives at a critical moment. Too often, there are disproportionate barriers to accessing mental health care for Black, Indigenous, racialized, 2SLGBTQIA+, Francophone, Northern, and low-income children and youth. We cannot achieve system transformation without embedding equity at the core of everything we do.
Read our Provincial Health Equity Strategy
Our vision for improving equity in child and youth mental health is a transformed community child and youth mental health and addictions system that actively addresses and dismantles inequities and barriers so that infants, children, youth, and families from equity-deserving communities get the mental health supports and services they need.