Grant: National Standards for Integrated Youth Services

A quarter of youth in Canada are affected by mental health and/or substance use concerns. Integrated youth services (IYS) bring together multiple services, including ones for mental health and substance use, to give young people coordinated care through one location. IYS are popping up across Canada, but there is currently a lack of standards for these initiatives to ensure they are providing optimal, equitable experiences throughout the country. One option for implementing standards is through a learning health system, a model of care where data and feedback are used in real-time for continuous quality improvement. Foundry, an IYS initiative in British Columbia, proposes testing two service initiatives (for example, peer support and work/study programs) using their recently developed IYS learning health system framework to assess 1) the barriers and facilitators to implementing this framework to support the adoption of IYS standards and 2) the actions Foundry can take to share lessons with other IYS initiatives across Canada to support standards implementation. The project team will use mixed methods and implementation science methodology across two stages for this work. In Stage 1, we will use a "real-world" trial at Foundry to test the two service initiatives using the IYS learning health system framework and see how the Foundry network responds to this test. In Stage 2, we will use the findings from Stage 1 to inform the conversations at deliberative dialogues and talking circles with diverse groups comprised of members from Foundry, other IYS initiatives, policymakers, and youth and their families/caregivers. Results will be shared with stakeholders through arts-based methods, sharing circles, white papers/policy briefs, and academic publications, along with regular meetings with other IYS initiatives. The results will provide key information for creating standards for IYS to improve outcomes and experiences for youth and families/caregivers across Canada.