Kinark has accomplished a lot over the last five years towards the goals in our 2014-2019 strategic plan.
Since 2014, we have focused on continuously improving everything we do—from our clinical programs and services to the way we support our employees to our business practices and technological solutions—so we can do our best to serve kids and families with the most complex needs.
Clients and families tell us we’re on the right track
As we embark on a new three-year strategic plan, it is important to reflect on all that the Kinark team has accomplished, and on how our clients and their families feel about the services we provide. The results of our 2018/19 client experience surveys suggest that we’re on the right track. Eighty-eight per cent of families and caregivers who completed a survey said that their children or youth got the services they needed from Kinark; 96 per cent felt that the services received were of high quality; and most importantly, 94 per cent said that the services provided helped their kids deal with their life challenges.
We also asked our service provider partners about their impressions of Kinark in relation to our role as a Lead Agency for community-based mental health services in three service areas. This year’s results are also encouraging: 85 per cent of core service providers feel that Kinark is doing a good job overall of establishing and maintaining inter-agency relationships.
In 2018/19, we continued to harness our considerable resources to address the needs of children and youth struggling with complex conditions. Having now reached a level of maturity to be truly informative, our program scorecards enable us to monitor service quality and client outcomes, and identify emerging trends and opportunities for further service improvement.
Through the hard work and dedication of our staff, our transition to a new service delivery model in our Child and Youth Mental Health Program is taking hold. We continue to make our out-of-home intensive (mental health) treatment services the best they can be. And, youth in our Forensic Mental Health/Youth Justice Program are benefitting from the consolidation of our inter-professional service delivery model.
Supporting children and youth with autism and their families
Our highly professional staff in the Autism Program continued to provide exceptional treatment and support services to children with autism and their families last year, even as the service model began to shift and change. As an agency that’s been providing high quality autism services for close to 20 years, we remain committed to serving this population with a range of new fee-for-service offerings in accordance with the program guidelines introduced by the Ontario government in February 2019.
Further steps were also taken last year to advance our multi-year digital transformation and enhance our human resource practices to better support our committed staff and attract new talent. You can read more about these and other initiatives in our 2018/19 Annual Report.
Guided by our mission and values, we will stay focused and do all that we can—in changing times—to explore, innovate and leverage new opportunities to respond to the complex needs of children and youth and their families.
Gregory Glenn
Chair, Board of Directors
Cathy Paul
President and Chief Executive Officer