Meeting Youth Where They Are: How Community Partners are Making Mental Health Support Easier to Reach

Access to mental health support shouldn’t depend on how far a young person can travel, how long they can wait, or whether they feel safe walking through the door. Yet for many children and youth across Canada, these are the types of barriers standing between them and support.

Demand for children and youth mental health services continues to rise. Emergency rooms and specialized care systems are working hard to keep pace, but the pressure is real: youth without access to private therapy are often on long waitlists and can face additional barriers to finding care that feels safe and culturally relevant. Without support earlier on, some of these situations escalate to a crisis point, adding further pressure to emergency rooms that may have been avoided with earlier intervention.

Since introducing our Children & Youth Mental Health focus area in 2022, the Peter Gilgan Foundation has supported 29 partners working to make mental health support easier for young people to reach. These partners are helping reduce the financial, physical, and cultural barriers that can prevent youth from getting care when and where they need it.

How partners are improving access

Across this portfolio, partners share a common approach: meeting youth where they are and making it easier to take that first step. Based on reporting submitted this past fiscal year, 83% of youth who received support through our partners indicated improved mental health, coping, or wellbeing. These results reinforce the value of making support easier to access and closer to where young people live, learn, and spend time. Approaches our partners are implementing include:

• Embedding support where youth already are: For youth who have disengaged from traditional school environments, mental health support and education are often treated as separate problems. Take a Hike takes a different approach, pairing a full-time mental health clinician with land-based learning and academic support, developed in collaboration with Indigenous communities and education experts (a priority as one-third of youth at Take a Hike identify as Indigenous). Clinical therapy is embedded in the classroom throughout the school year, while also immersing young people in a land-based learning program that helps them build the confidence and connection needed to reengage.

• Creating clearer pathways to care: Youth accessing health services often need to retell their story to a new provider at every step – physical care from one professional, mental health support from another, each requiring a new appointment and a new introduction. For youth already navigating difficult circumstances, that repetition can be a barrier. The Alex Community Health Centre restructured its Youth Health Bus team so mental health clinicians work directly alongside physicians and nurses, meaning a single visit can address both physical and mental health needs, with warm handoffs to longer-term care when it’s needed. The result is fewer separate touchpoints and more continuous, trusted care.

• Helping youth navigate transition points: Youth aging out of the child welfare system often face significant barriers to care such as long waitlists and complex referral processes at a moment in their development when timely support matters most. In partnership with a network of trusted community providers including Pape Adolescent Resource Centre and Children’s Aid Society of Toronto, the Connections Program streamlines access to mental health care, facilitates timely referrals to specialized supports, and helps young people navigate often complex service systems through individualized wellness assessments and tailored care plans.

“I think the biggest thing that the Connections program has done for me would be therapy. Therapy has honestly changed my life. I think that as a former foster youth, we’ve experienced so much trauma in life…I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it weren’t for the life experiences I’ve had. My success may not look like everyone else’s. But I’m not everyone else.”

– Brittany (pictured above), whose journey through foster care led her to the Connections Program

Where we see opportunity

These examples signal where continued support can make a difference: helping partners bring care closer to young people, build trust, and reduce barriers so youth can access support before challenges escalate.

Demand continues to outpace capacity in many communities, and gaps in access to effective care persist. Continued investment in community-based, lower-barrier models will be essential to reaching the youth who need the support most.