Monday January 13, 2025
To: Public Health Agency of Canada
C/O Canadian Mental Health Association Windsor-Essex County Branch (CMHA-WECB)
As a member of the Director’s Forum of Children and Youth Service Providers, on behalf of the WECHU, I am pleased to offer my full support for the Windsor-Essex application to the Youth Mental Health Fund (YMHF).
The Director’s Forum is a voluntary association of 30+ directors of organizations in Windsor-Essex who join to facilitate an accessible, integrated, and flexible network of services for children, youth, and their families.
Director’s Forum Objectives:
- To provide a forum where Directors can share information on their involvement in planning forums at a broad systems level and the activities and plans regarding services for children, youth and their families within their own agency or service area.
- To provide a forum to identify areas where planning and service coordination could occur.
- To provide a forum for open discussion of critical issues involving service planning and delivery.
- To serve as a vehicle to offer direction, feedback and advocacy on critical issues concerning the planning and delivery of children’s services in our community to funders, municipal representatives, and the community at large.
To provide input on the priorities for the Lead Agency Child, Youth, and Community Mental Health Multiyear Plan and to monitor progress on the approved priorities. We, as partners, endorse the proposal which includes CMHA-WECB as lead and acknowledge Windsor-Essex Community Health Centre as a co-lead.
Given these objectives, members of my team met as a Director’s Forum on December 3rd and discussed the unique and pressing needs of the Windsor-Essex community related to youth mental health and reached consensus around a common vision for how this funding could be used to benefit diverse youth populations. We are confident in the project proposed and are pleased to endorse a single collaborative application on behalf of Windsor-Essex.
We would like to thank Health Canada for its investment in Youth Mental Health, specifically the needs of Equity-deserving, Indigenous and underserved youth populations. We look forward to future opportunities.
Sincerely,
Dr. Ken Blanchette