Leading with Purpose, Serving with Impact
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Over the past year, Kinark has made a significant impact by consistently serving our communities, working towards addressing system challenges, and demonstrating leadership across the sector. Through a strong commitment to the needs of children, youth, and families, Kinark has played a key role in enhancing local services and shaping the future of child and youth mental health in Ontario.
In 2024/25, Kinark continued to lead and innovate across Ontario’s child and youth mental health system. As both a service provider and a sector partner, Kinark remains focused on addressing system challenges, advancing evidence-informed care, and delivering high-quality services to the communities we serve. This year, we introduced our Time-Limited Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), which promotes focused, outcome-driven mental health support for children and youth. Kinark’s model prioritizes timely access to care, clear treatment goals, and measurable outcomes, helping to ensure that young people receive the right care at the right time. This approach has supported stronger clinical outcomes and is contributing to system capacity by reducing wait times and improving flow through services.
As the Lead Agency for child and youth mental health in York, Durham, and Haliburton/Kawartha/Peterborough (HKP) service areas, Kinark has worked together with service partners to advance a multi-year strategy that prioritizes access, community partnerships across child and youth services, and supporting targeted populations in the communities we serve. In Durham, we have been working with partners to enhance our central intake and make it easier to connect families to the right mental health services for their kids. In York, our partnership work with schoolboards will lay the groundwork for more seamless care between school and mental health services. And in HKP, and across all regions, we have created a forum for multi-organizational quality improvement that relies on our improving access to data and the experience that each provider (and family) uniquely brings to the table. These efforts reflect Kinark’s role as a connector and steward, helping to ensure system partners are aligned in meeting the needs of children, youth, and families that we serve.
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(Staff) helped me a lot with getting me to understand my emotions and how to cope with them. She was very open and understanding and never pushing me to talk about things I didn’t want to and that was very helpful. – CYMH Client |  |
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More than 9 out of 10 caregivers of children and youth in our CYMH program agreed that services helped their child better manage the challenges in their life. |
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98% youth in our CYMH program agreed that services helped them better manage the challenges in their life. |
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Kinark also continues to play a leadership role in the development of provincial pathways for intensive treatment through our involvement in the building of the Ontario Intensive Treatment Pathway (OITP). The OITP is a provincial initiative aimed at improving intensive mental health treatment for children and youth in Ontario. It focuses on creating a connected model of intensive treatment, starting with a focus on live-in treatment, and aiming to improve access, equity, and service outcomes. The OITP is designed to be a provincially guided, regionally delivered model that ensures Ontario’s children and youth have timely access to effective, individualized treatment. Kinark has contributed to provincial discussions on access, service criteria, and pathways to care, bringing practical insight from our experience delivering intensive services. By helping to shape more coordinated and consistent treatment pathways, Kinark is working to ensure that youth with complex needs can access the support they require across Ontario.
Kinark continued to expand our capacity to meet the diverse needs of children and youth with autism and their families. Our programs remain a vital support for families, offering timely, goal-focused interventions that address gaps in the system. In addition to our fee-for-service offerings, Kinark delivered three key Ministry-funded OAP programs: Caregiver-Mediated Early Years (CMEY), Entry to School (ETS), and Foundational Family Services. We served 178 CMEY clients and 576 ETS clients this year, helping to prepare young children and their caregivers for important developmental transitions. These programs play a critical role in promoting early skill development and caregiver confidence.
Kinark also contributed to broader sector conversations on service navigation and integrated care models, helping to promote a more coordinated approach for families accessing both autism and mental health supports. Through our active involvement in the York Simcoe Autism Network (YSAN), we collaborated with partners to better understand and measure client experience across funded services. This work is helping to inform how we prioritize and enhance programming based on what families identify as most important to them.
By listening to community needs while shaping the future of care, Kinark continues to bring leadership, stability, and innovation to the child and youth mental health sector.