6-7-5: You can count on CAMH's New Strategic Plan

CAMH Connexions

Fall 2006

by Dr. Paul Garfinkel, President and CEO, CAMH

Dr. Paul Garfinkel, CAMH President and CEO

As Canada's largest addiction and mental health facility, CAMH has taken on an ambitious mandate: to transform lives. To help accomplish this, we need to set our organizational directions strategically and renew them regularly - every three years.

When we began our most recent strategic plan renewal process, we determined that CAMH's existing mission, vision, values and goals - which guided CAMH through 2003-2006 - are still relevant and inspiring. Building on these, CAMH's Board of Trustees has now set five new strategic directions to provide clarity and focus during these changing times.

The renewal process that shaped the Strategic Plan for 2006-2009 included a scan of our environment, and consultations with clients, families, staff, volunteers, and partners in the community, hospital and academic sectors. During our consultations, we asked for input on what CAMH is doing well, and what we could do better or differently. Hundreds of people within CAMH, as well as partners and other providers across the province provided enthusiastic feedback.

CAMH's 5 new directions

1. Build an Integrated System
   CAMH will build an integrated system with our community partners so that clients with addictions and mental illness receive the continuity of care they need beyond the hospital. We will work with our partners to ensure that housing, employment, income and social support issues are addressed as critical elements of client care, recovery and reintegration, and are supported through healthy public policies.
2. Provide Specialized Clinical Services
   CAMH will provide specialized clinical services in mental health and addictions, and will differentiate its clinical services from other providers. We will serve clients with complex needs, offer a unique roster of evidence-based clinical services, and continue to incorporate health promotion principles and strategies into clinical care. We will ensure that changes to the continuum of services are implemented transparently and incrementally and not before system capacity exists.
3. Expand Support for Best Clinical Practice, Professional Education and Professional Development
   CAMH will widen our clinical role beyond the Toronto area by extending our professional education efforts to a broader range of health professionals, building clinical capacity, and developing new models of care while supporting health promotion and prevention.
4. Maximize the Reach and Impact of Research
   CAMH will focus on four domains of research - neuroscience; brain imaging; clinical; and social policy and health promotion/prevention, and will increase the application of research to clinical practice, professional and public education, health promotion and public policy.

5. Foster a Healthy Workplace
   This internal commitment encourages staff to excel in a culture that embraces diversity, teamwork, quality improvement, safety and respect, recognizing how critically important staff are to the success of everything we do now and going forward.

We have an excellent framework for coherent, incremental, balanced change in the Strategic Plan, which re-commits CAMH to where we’ve come from, and points us toward where we’re going. Over the next three years we are committed to working with our partners and other providers to build a truly integrated system of services and supports for people who are challenged by mental health and addiction issues.

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