Goals of CAMH Public Education Program

Public Education Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Overall Goals:

• To lead the development of strategies designed to increase public understanding of addiction and mental health problems, improve access and encourage help seeking using evidence-based best practices, through a range of collaborative partnerships with community organizations, clients, family members, and target communities.
• To ease the public's access to accurate health information through positioning CAMH as a central source for mental health and addiction information in Ontario, and building capacity to be increasingly responsive to information needs through a range of dissemination strategies.

Strategic Objectives

1. To lead the development of strategies designed to directly reach target audiences to increase public understanding of addiction and mental health problems, improve access to information and services, and encourage help seeking using evidence-based best practices.
2. To increase the capacity of intermediaries, communities and service providers to engage in activities designed to improve understanding of mental health and addiction issues through sharing of knowledge and resources.

Public Education Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health

Guiding principles
The following principles will guide the way in public education and information services will be undertaken:

1. Ensuring Access:
   Consideration to reducing barriers  which may impede access to information, resources, or service
2. Supportive and welcoming approaches and environments
   Environments will be responsive, respectful, safe and focused on the needs of the individual.
3. Inclusiveness/Empowerment
   Initiatives will create opportunities for the equitable and active participation of clients, families, volunteers and community partners. 
4. Diversity
   Initiatives will be sensitive to race, culture, language, ethnicity, gender, age, abilities, religion and sexual orientation/gender identity, socio-economic status and literacy ability. Equitable access to services will be a particular consideration and focus in the development and delivery of services and resources. 
5. Innovation
   Initiatives will strive for excellence, creativity and innovation in all endeavours and reflects best practices.
6. Evaluation/Continuous  Improvement
   Products and services will be measured to ensure that they will :
   1. Be continuously improved.
   2. Be able to meet the changing demands
   3. Ensure innovation
   4. Are accountable

7. Provincial Role
   Initiatives will ensure that information is accessible throughout the province through a range of strategies and will support identified CAMH and CECH provincial priorities.

8. Partnerships
   Initiatives will create opportunities for building equitable partnerships in order to maximize the resources that currently exist and to ensure the enhancement of available information.  Projects will:
   1. Recognize  that collaboration  and cooperation are optimal
   2. Continually develop opportunities for partnerships 
   3. Foster a collaborative culture
9. Sustainability
   Initiatives will give consideration to the need to ensure sustainability.  Planning, development and implementation must demonstrate how initiatives will be sustained.
10. Addressing Overarching Issues
    Initiatives will integrate the importance of the four major determinants of health: housing, employment, social support and income support, in partnership with other internal and external resources.
11. Employment Opportunities
    Projects will explore opportunities to create employment and/or training alternatives through its various activities.
12. Knowledge Transfer
    Information developed and/or disseminated will undergo scientific and editorial review to ensure it is both accurate and accessible for the intended audiences. 
13. Priority Programs
    Resources will be allocated to addressing the public education and/or information opportunities within the priority program areas.

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