Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario (YWHO) is a system change initiative working with local service providers to deliver Integrated Youth Services (IYS) including mental health, substance use health, primary care, social services and recreation. A core component to the YWHO model is meaningful youth and family engagement. In 2023, the YWHO Provincial Office undertook a strategic planning process to guide the system building priorities over the next three years.
In this workshop, youth leaders and YWHO Provincial Office team members will lead activities describing steps taken in YWHO’s Provincial strategic planning process and youth co-leadership including:
- Process to meaningfully co-develop the strategic plan with youth
- Supports provided to youth to meaningfully participate
- Process to identify and develop the skills that youth wanted to build through the process
- Challenges, lessons learned and approaches to addressing barriers
- Positive impact of youth co-leadership versus advisory/engagement
Learning Objectives
- Increase knowledge of approaches to effectively partnering with youth in strategic planning for system improvement.
- Increase understanding of common barriers to meaningful co-leadership with youth and strategies to overcome them.
- Identify opportunities to more meaningfully engage youth in local system building and strategic leadership.
Presenters:
Maria Talotta (Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario)
Maria Talotta is the Director of Strategy and Transformation at Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario (YWHO). Their work brings people together to co-develop and implement YWHO’s Integrated Youth Services (IYS) model and implement YWHO’s vision of improving youth outcomes through accessible, high quality, developmentally appropriate, equitable and integrated services including, mental health and substance use health, primary care and social supports and recreation for youth ages 12-25. Maria has a long history of partnership with youth, families, service providers and other system leaders working to co-develop system innovation and advance health equity and is a current CMHO board member.
Lee Cameron (Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario)
Ravneet Kaur (Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario)
Ariana Prom (Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario)
