Foundry Cariboo Chilcotin – Now Open!
Foundry Cariboo-Chilcotin – Now Open!
We are excited to announce that Foundry Cariboo Chilcotin has opened its doors in Williams Lake – 51, 4th Avenue South!
Foundry Cariboo Chilcotin provides young people ages 12-24 and their families, free and confidential age-friendly services to fit their unique needs, such as drop-in counselling, medical services; including physical and sexual health care, youth and family peer support and social services. Currently, there are 14 Foundry centres open throughout the province with an additional 9 new centres in development.
We congratulate Cariboo Chilcotin Child Development Centre and the numerous community partners who played an instrumental role in bringing Foundry to Cariboo Chilcotin! We are so excited to see Foundry Cariboo Chilcotin officially open its doors and welcome youth and their caregivers.
Read the news release or visit foundrybc.ca https://foundrybc.ca/cariboo-chilcotin-now-open/ to learn more.
Foundry Richmond – Now Open!
Foundry Richmond – Now Open!
We are excited to announce that Foundry Richmond has opened its doors at 101-5811 Cooney Rd!
Foundry Richmond provides young people ages 12-24 and their families, free and confidential age-friendly services to fit their unique needs, such as drop-in counselling, medical services; including physical and sexual health care, youth and family peer support and social services. Currently, there are 13 Foundry centres open throughout the province with an additional 10 new centres in development.
We congratulate Vancouver Coastal Health Authority (VCH), Richmond Addictions Services Society (RASS) and the numerous community partners who played an instrumental role in bringing Foundry to Richmond! We are so excited to see Foundry Richmond officially open its doors and welcome youth and their caregivers.
Read the news release, available in both English and Chinese, or visit foundrybc.ca/richmond to learn more.
Foundry Sunshine Coast – Coming Soon!
Foundry Sunshine Coast – Coming Soon!
We are proud to announce that a new Foundry centre will be coming to the Sunshine Coast in the future!
Once open, young people and families/caregivers in the Sunshine Coast will have increased access to free and confidential health and wellness supports to fit their unique needs. We’re excited to welcome Foundry Sunshine Coast into our growing network of Foundry centres and continue our mission in supporting youth in living a good life.
Following Fort St. John, Tri-Cities and Kamloops, Foundry Sunshine Coast is the final new centre announcement of Budget 2021.
We are incredibly grateful to Sunshine Coast Community Services – the lead agency for Foundry Sunshine Coast – as well as the Government of BC and community partners across the province for their support in making this possible.
To learn more, read the news release here or visit foundrybc.ca/expansion.
If you have any questions, please email expansion@foundrybc.ca.
Launch of first-ever Canadian youth mental health platform will transform research and treatments
A pioneering youth mental health project will enhance Canada’s overall understanding of youth mental health needs and advance new assessment and treatment approaches. Each year, one of out every four youth in Canada needs mental health services, making an initiative such as this urgent and critical for the well-being of our young people. The “Canadian Youth Mental Health Insight (CYMHI) Platform” powered by RBC Future Launch, will use open data, machine learning and other methods to improve communication between youth and families, researchers, clinicians and other service providers with diverse mental health experiences and specializations.
A specialized research team has been awarded a $5.13-million grant to create this platform to optimize mental health with and for youth across Canada. Generous funding has been provided from RBC Future Launch, Power Corporation of Canada, and the Canada Brain Research Fund (CBRF), an innovative arrangement between the Government of Canada, through Health Canada, and Brain Canada.
Led by Dr. Sean Hill, Director of the Krembil Centre of Neuroinformatics, and Senior Scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), the team brings together diverse organizations across the country including academic institutions, community-based mental health services, hospitals, and youth and family advisories from Foundry, Youth Wellness Hubs Ontario, and other integrated youth services.
The Insight platform will provide an interactive web portal for youth, family members, clinicians, service providers, researchers, and policy makers to access shared data, analytics, and AI tools for optimizing mental health care. The portal will enable users to find data and connect insights from community and school prevention programs, youth mental health services, and clinical research studies. The portal will also provide access to AI-based services to help users navigate mental health services, personalized tools for monitoring mental health, identifying risks, and recommending services, and an interactive atlas of youth mental health service demand and availability to guide service providers and policymakers.
“Through this project, we are providing a state-of-the-art informatics platform that serves as a foundation to improve mental health for, and importantly, with youth across the country,” notes Hill. “It will facilitate high impact research and the development of youth mental health approaches that would otherwise not be possible.”
“The CYMHI is a fantastic development to empower youth and youth-involved initiatives to take ownership in paving the way for future mental health service implementation,” says Suchayte Bali, Youth Engagement Coordinator at Foundry. “At a grassroots level, this can allow for many youth-led not-for-profit organizations to garner an understanding for which supports are needed in their communities, now backed by machine learning data from across Canada.”
“Right now, 9 out of 10 provinces are funding services with research components, British Columbia can’t learn from New Brunswick, and Ontario is missing evidence from Saskatchewan and so on,” says CYMHI leadership team member Steve Mathias, Executive Director at Providence Health Care and leader of Foundry, a British Columbia network of centres that offer young people health and wellness resources, services and supports both in person and virtually. “It is about bringing everyone together to share and exchange what we are living, and learning.”
Mental illness disproportionately affects young people between the ages of 15 and 29 worldwide. It accounts for approximately half of the overall burden of disease in this age group, making it the leading cause of disability in Canada.
“More than ever, brain research is critical in helping us, as a community, recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigate its effects on the brain and our mental health,” says Dr. Viviane Poupon, Brain Canada President, and CEO. “We must invest in projects like these that will lead to concrete impacts on brain health for youth in Canada.”
“The stress, anxiety, depression, and loneliness caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have disproportionally impacted the mental health of young people in Canada. With so many children and youth still struggling, it is essential that we accelerate our efforts to ensure that young people have access to appropriate supports when and where they need them,” says The Honourable Carolyn Bennett, Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health. “This ground-breaking mental health platform will continue to improve youth mental health services by listening to youth in order to base our response on a much better understanding of youth priorities, needs and treatment approaches.”
“It’s important to us that youth across Canada have the best opportunities to thrive and reach their fullest potential,” says Mark Beckles, Vice-President, Social Impact and Innovation, RBC. “Through our partnership with Brain Canada, we’re focused on increasing and accelerating access to services for youth who are facing mental health concerns, while facilitating digital solutions for practitioners and researchers.”
“At Power Corporation we recognize how critical it is to strengthen access to mental health services and supports for young Canadians and their families, wherever they live. We are proud to be able to support the Canadian Youth Mental Health Insight (CYMHI) Platform. This advanced digital platform and pan-Canadian partnership between researchers and practitioners promises to fill gaps in support and ultimately enhance the quality of youth mental health care in every region of the country,” says Paul Genest, Senior Vice President, Power Corporation of Canada.
This project was awarded funding through the 2021 open call for applications to the Brain Canada Youth Mental Health Platform, powered by RBC Future Launch, with generous support from Power Corporation of Canada.
Funding for the Brain Canada Youth Mental Health Platform has been made possible by the Canada Brain Research Fund (CBRF), an innovative arrangement between the Government of Canada (through Health Canada) and Brain Canada Foundation.
To learn more about this exciting project, visit Brain Canada’s website.
Foundry PhD research trainee receives prestigious Clyde Hertzman Memorial Fellowship
On August 31, 2022, Katherine (Katie) Hastings, a UBC doctoral student was named the successful recipient of the 2nd annual ‘Society to Cell’ Clyde Hertzman Memorial Fellowship for her research project, “How has the mental health service needs of youth in BC changed since the pandemic: a retrospective analysis using data from a province-wide integrated youth service network“.
The ‘Society to Cell’ Clyde Hertzman Memorial Fellowship financially supports UBC trainees who are conducting research projects that will enrich our understanding of the impact of social and environmental factors on health and well-being across the life course.
For Dr. Skye Barbic, Head Scientist at Foundry, this scholarship honours the legacy of Dr. Hertzman – who passed away suddenly in February 2013 – as a world-leading researcher in the social determinants of health, a champion for social justice, and a tireless advocate for youth.
“We are so proud of Katie’s work to date,” says Dr. Barbic, “and look forward to partnering with her and Dr. Anne Gadermann from the UBC School of Public and Population Health to advance this impactful research and support Katie’s trajectory as a future health service leader, educator, and researcher.
Learn more about her project below:
How has the mental health service needs of youth in BC changed since the pandemic: a retrospective analysis using data from a province-wide integrated youth service network
Canada and many parts of the world are investing in an emerging model of care called Integrated Youth Services (IYS), combining a blend of traditional (psychiatric care, counseling) and non-traditional services (peer support, primary care, and social services) delivered in a singular, accessible and youth-friendly location. This comes at a critical time in which youth are facing unprecedented levels of social isolation and missing important developmental milestones with school closures, quarantine orders, and increased family and individual stress due to the pandemic.
The overall aim of this study is to understand the impact of integrated youth services (IYS) on access and service utilization patterns among diverse youth in BC, by describing characteristics and predictors of service utilization among youth accessing IYS; comparing temporal trends of service use and mental health outcomes of youth accessing services by IYS sites over time (2018-2022); and comparing overall service utilization patterns (i.e., any mental health-related services accessed in BC) of youth before and after an initial visit at an IYS.
With widening socioeconomic and health inequities, understanding the impact of Foundry, an IYS established in 2015, and the needs of diverse youth in BC will help inform rapid policy and public health action to address these disparities.
“Being awarded this fellowship means a lot to me,” says Katie. “Dr. Clyde Hertzman has left a huge legacy in the field of early childhood development and I hope to honor his vision to explore ‘differences that make a difference’ through this work.”
“We have a unique opportunity to examine the mental health landscape and service needs of youth through the rich data sources available at Foundry. Findings from this study can be used to identify potential gaps in access and services needed to address the increasing mental health burden among youth brought on by the pandemic.”
Congratulations to Katie on this award!
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Two Foundry teams funded through PHC’s annual Practice-based Research Challenge
On Aug 23, two Foundry Vancouver-Granville teams were among the 15 successful teams receiving funding through the annual PHC Practice-based Research Challenge, for their research project: Experiences of Indigenous youth accessing mental health care through primary care and psychiatry at two inner-city integrative community health centres.
The Research Challenge is a competition open to point-of-care PHC staff and offers research teams the opportunity to work with a mentor to develop a research proposal around a research question, where they learn basic research skills and compete with other teams for funding to conduct a small-scale research project.
Presentations were judged by a panel comprised of scientific and Patient and Family Partner reviewers.
Winning teams receive up to $5,000 each in research award funding to conduct their research over an 18-month period.
Learn more about their project below:
Experiences of Indigenous youth accessing mental health care through primary care and psychiatry at two inner-city integrative community health centres.
Team members:
- Janae Dunlop RN
- Lyn Heinemann OT
- Emily Leake NP
- Sarah Cochrane NP
- Courteney Durand PFP
Young people aged 15–24 are more likely to experience mental health and/or substance use disorders than any other age group. As a result of the negative impacts of colonization, cultural oppression and historical trauma, Indigenous youth experience a disproportionate burden of mental health and substance use concerns with even more barriers to accessing care than non-Indigenous youth. Primary care and mental health services in urban settings have generally not been adapted to serve the needs of Indigenous young people.
The aim of this project is to gain an understanding of the experiences of Indigenous youth ages 16-24 years who have accessed mental health care through primary care and psychiatry at two urban health centres. Findings may help service providers optimize the care outcomes and experiences of urban Indigenous youth and directions for future research.
What is the experience of youth transitioning from Foundry youth services to adult care?
Team members:
- Farzana Rayani – Nurse Practitioner
- Chelsea Stratton – Rehab Assistant
- Ingrid Mayer – Patient Family Partner
- Danielle O’Callaghan – Patient Partner
Our research project will look at the experience of youth transitioning from Foundry integrative youth services to adult care, or independence. Foundry is a community-based youth (age 16-25 years) mental health and substance use clinic. Foundry Services are comprehensive and offer mental health care, substance use services, primary care, social services, and youth and family peer supports.
Due to this “one stop shop” approach to care, our clinic is heavily involved in many aspects of a client’s life until they turn 25. There is currently no transition pathway or plan in place that Foundry clinicians can use to guide clients through the ageing out process.
To explore this transition period, we will complete a qualitative research study using interviews and focus groups with former Foundry clients to identify the ways their health, and overall wellbeing has changed since ageing out of Foundry care. Our goal is to use the information gathered and to develop a pathway Foundry can use to better support and prepare our clients as they transition out of our care.
Foundry Vancouver-Granville is part of the Foundry network, a growing provincial and national network that includes over 200 partnerships. It also serves as one of 12 Foundry centres across BC that provides free and confidential health and wellness services for young people ages 12-24.
“The Foundry Network is a Learning Health System,” says Dr. Skye Barbic, Head Scientist, Foundry. “The Research Challenge is an opportunity to create, acquire, and transfer new knowledge from one centre and share insights with partner organizations in Vancouver and across the entire Foundry network.
“The success of these teams shows incredible commitment from service providers at Foundry Vancouver Granville. We are grateful to their commitment to generate and share evidence to improve the outcomes and experience of youth and families.”
Congratulations to Janae Dunlop, Lyn Heinemann, Emily Leake, Sarah Cochrane, Courteney Durand, Farzana Rayani, Chelsea Stratton, Ingrid Mayer, Danielle O’Callaghan on this award!
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