Local Action Team - Child Youth and Mental Health Substance Use

Comox Valley Family Services Association is a member of the Comox Valley Local Action Team (LAT) for Child Youth and Mental Health Substance Use. This collaborative of many community agencies will be looking at how to improve access to mental health and substance use services.

The overall goal is: to increase the number of children, youth and their families receiving timely access to integrated mental health and substance use services and supports throughout the province.  A key component is input from the families, children and youth we serve.

CYMHSU Local Action Teams will achieve one or more of the following aims

1. Identify, map, and communicate current access to local services and supports for children, youth, youth in transition, and their families through patient journey mapping, service mapping, and creation of resource inventories. 

2. Deploy local protocols to streamline care using newly developed information sharing guidelines, while fostering a culture of information sharing within the community.

3. Establish or link to existing initiatives to provide multi-sector wraparound care to children, youth and their families.

4. Work with schools to provide mental health literacy for teachers, students and parents through initiatives such as: professional development/training programs related to CYMHSU and youth and parent peer support.

5. Increase participation of schools and communities in fostering “caring adults” to provide support and protective factors for children and youth.

6. Increase participation in the Practice Support Program’s (PSP) Child and Youth Mental Health Module by family physicians, as well as CYMHSU partners and service providers, such as MCFD, school counsellors, and community agencies, in consultation with regional PSP managers. Targets for improvement will be locally determined in conjunction with the PSP program and should be robust and significant.

7. Promote uptake of the Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) Indigenous Cultural Competency (ICC) Training to address cultural safety challenges in mental health and substance use for indigenous peoples.

8. Test and implement system-level prototypes, guidelines and protocols as recommended by the Collaborative Working Groups, such as ER Guidelines, Youth to Adult Transition Protocol, Model of Care for CYMHSU, Information Sharing Guidelines, etc. 

For more information contact the Executive Director