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The Hincks-Dellcrest Centre is dedicated to promoting optimal mental health in infants, children, youth and their families, and to contributing to the achievement of healthy communities.
The Centre's broad range of services includes prevention, out-patient, day treatment, residential treatment, and mandated services. These services are enriched by activities in research, program evaluation, the education and training of mental health professionals, and the use of volunteers.
The Centre's treatment philosophy includes the following central beliefs and values:
- All persons have inherent worth and dignity.
- Mental health problems are common, and seeking help to prevent or overcome them is a sign of health and strength.
- No infant, child, or youth exists in isolation; therefore, to prevent or overcome mental health problems, services need to work and collaborate with relevant family, school and community systems.
- Each infant, child, youth and family is different; therefore knowledge of and respect for their unique strengths, resources, needs, and culture is essential to the selection, design and helpfulness of services.
Two programs provide primary prevention and early intervention programs to children and their families. The downtown program (called Growing Together) provides its services to infants, preschoolers, and their families, who live in St. James Town, a high-density development. The northwest program (called Prevention and Early Intervention Services - Sheppard Site) provides its services to infants and preschoolers, and their families, who live in a number of different neighbourhoods in the northwest section of Toronto. It also provides services to school-aged children in schools serving the same or similar neighbourhoods.
Both programs provide home visiting, children's groups, parents' groups, parent-child groups, individual parent education and support, individual child support, community presentations, information pamphlets, mobile toy-lending services, and consultation to community caregivers. The two programs are variously involved in a number of national and provincial prevention and early intervention programs, including: Community Action Program for Children, Healthy Babies Healthy Children, Canada Prenatal Nutrition Program, Building Brighter Futures, TLC3, and Ontario Early Years Centres.
Other special projects include: Learning through Play Calendar and Board Game; Speech and Language Calendar; Baby Connection; Partners for Conflict Resolution; and, the Community Interpretation Project; Parenting White Board; Learning Through Play for Special Needs Children Resources; The Power of Play Resource Book; Making Mealtimes Matter; Growing Up Safely Parent Resource; The Ethics Game; New Family Connections; School-based Youth Prevention/Diversion Project; Westminster/Branson Project.
The Centre's prevention services are funded by the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services, the United Way, various provincial and federal grants, and private donors.
In 2006-2007, over 6,000 children and families were served by the Centre's prevention services.
Mental health counselling and treatment services are provided by a number of different Hincks-Dellcrest programs to infants, children, and youth (aged birth to 17). With the exception of four placements reserved in two residential treatment homes for youth who have been convicted of offenses under the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), all of these services are voluntary. There are three major types of services: outpatient, day treatment, and residential treatment.
Services within these programs are provided in the context of a multidisciplinary approach that includes access to personnel from a variety of mental health disciplines (social work, psychology, psychiatry, nursing, and child and youth work), according to each client's needs. Some services are provided by trainees closely monitored by an experienced supervisor. Voluntary treatment services at Hincks-Dellcrest are funded largely by the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services.
In 2006-2007, over 1,800 children and their families were served by the Centre's voluntary treatment services.
Two programs (one located in downtown Toronto, serving clients who live in the former City of Toronto; one located in northwest Toronto, serving clients who live in the former North York) provide outpatient mental health counselling and treatment to infants, children, and youth up to the age of 17.
Available services include single session consultation, brief family therapy, longer-term family therapy, group therapy, individual therapy, liaison with schools or other service providers, and specialized psychological or psychiatric assessments and consultation.
The outpatient programs also provide outreach services to students of the Toronto District School Board, or in collaboration with other community partners.
Two programs (one located in downtown Toronto and one located in northwest Toronto) provide day treatment to children and youth who are experiencing serious, chronic mental health problems that significantly interfere with their ability to function in a community school setting as well as in their families and/or communities.
The downtown Toronto location offers three to four day treatment placements for youth aged 12 to 17. The northwest Toronto location offers twenty-eight to thirty-two placements for children and youth aged 5 to 14.
Each day treatment client is provided with an integrated program characterized by a range of strategies, including: clinical assessment prior to placement; placement in a daily, therapeutic classroom milieu; individualized educational programming; specialized psychological or psychiatric assessment, if required; parent education; parent groups; family therapy; individual therapy for children or youth; and, various types of group therapy.
Service is provided by a multidisciplinary team of Hincks-Dellcrest personnel, in collaboration with teachers from the Toronto District School Board.
Follow-through services are provided after a client leaves a day treatment placement. These services include support to the client and family during the transition back to the community school setting. They also include assisting the family to connect with community resources needed to maintain or enhance gains made by the client during day treatment.
The northwest Toronto day treatment program also offers outreach services to children registered in two behavioural classrooms of the Toronto District School Board. These services include teacher training and consultation, group work with the children, individual supportive counselling for the children, and informal parent support.
Project 180, a strict discipline program run in collaboration with the Toronto District School Board, provides a day setting for youth from the GTA who have been expelled from their school system.
The Centre has three residences that provide short-term (three months to two years) residential treatment services to seriously disturbed children and youth.
Clients served in residential treatment usually have acute and/or extreme social-emotional and behavioural problems (e.g., repeated suicide gestures, placing self or others at risk, fire setting, running away), and often have multiple mental health diagnoses. Long-standing family problems also are often, although not always, are present. Children and youth usually are not admitted to residential treatment unless family and community-based treatment has been tried and found insufficient to meet the child or youth's treatment needs. All referrals to residential treatment must be supported by the parent or guardian.
An educational program is provided to each child or youth in residential treatment. In some cases, residents continue to attend their regular schools. However, in most cases, residents attend special classrooms run collaboratively by Hincks-Dellcrest personnel and teachers from the Toronto District School Board. These classrooms are designed to provide educational services to children and youth receiving treatment services who do not cope adequately in a community school. The school board component of the classrooms is funded by the Ontario Ministry of Education. Some older youth attend work programs in addition to, or instead of, attending school.
Aftercare support is provided to former residents and their families after discharge from residential treatment.
Weston Road. Located in the northwest section of Toronto, this residence provides residential treatment services to eight boys aged six to 12.
City Residential. Located in downtown Toronto, this residence provides residential treatment services to thirteen boys and girls, aged 12 o 17. Two additional placements are reserved for youth convicted of an offense committed when they were 12 to 15 and sentenced to open custody.
The Farm. This residence is a 100-acre working farm about 180 kilometres northwest of Toronto in Heathcote, Ontario. It provides residential treatment to seventeen boys and girls (aged 12 to 17) who are the most difficult to serve. Two additional placements are reserved for youth convicted of an offense committed when they were 12 to 15 and sentenced to open custody.
The Centre has an open custody residence for youth who have been convicted, under Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), of an offense committed when they were 16 or 17 years of age and who are sentenced to open custody. The Centre provides a Day Program for youth in its open custody, aftercare counselling services for some of the youth, and consultation services (Young Offender Assessment Service) to other agencies providing similar open custody placements.
The Centre's services to youth in open custody take into account the fact that the vast majority of youth who offend have therapeutic needs. These needs range from a simple need for better self-esteem and more developmentally appropriate problem solving and social skills, to resolution of feelings, beliefs, and attitudes resulting from abusive or other traumatic life events, to long-term management of serious psychiatric illnesses.
Admission to any open-custody facility is not voluntary. The youth are sentenced to open custody by a Youth Court. Although the youth do not have a choice about being in open custody, specific treatment services (e.g., psychiatric assessment, psychotherapy, medication) are provided only with appropriate consent.
The Centre's mandated services are funded by the Ontario Ministry of Children and Youth Services (Youth Justice).
In 2006-2007, 103 youth received mandated services from the Centre.
As a Centre partially affiliated with the University of Toronto, Hincks-Dellcrest has a long tradition of professional training in child and youth work, nursing, psychiatry, psychology, social work, and early childhood education. Our commitment as a teaching centre is to help the community, by ensuring that future clinicians are well equipped to deal with the present and future challenges of service delivery. In 2006-2007, 123 trainees were placed at the Centre and assisted in the delivery of services.
Current research and evaluation studies include languages disorders, adolescent depression, infant development and intervention, the trajectory of offending (illegal) behaviour, and the effectiveness of existing services. To help build the knowledge base for the field of children's mental health, personnel involved in the studies published their findings and also present them at conferences.
Volunteers play a key role at the Centre and actively participate in the delivery of many of our prevention, early intervention and treatment programs. In 2006-2007, 65 volunteers assisted in the work of the Centre.
The Centre invests in a number of activities intended to monitor, and continuously improve the quality of its services. These activities include:
- Reviews by external bodies, measuring the Centre's functioning against industry standards and expectations. Currently, the Centre is reviewed by:
- The Council on Accreditation for Services for Children and Families (COA), which reviews the entire organization every four years. COA accreditation is accepted by Children's Mental Health Ontario (CMHO) as equivalent to CMHO accreditation. The most recent review occurred in 2004. The 2008 review will involve a revised set of standards from COA.
- The Ministry of Children and Youth Services, which annually reviews all children's residences for licensing purposes.
- The United Way, which reviews the prevention and early intervention programs that it funds (and the organization's administrative structure for those programs) every two years.
- The College of Physician's and Surgeons of Canada, which reviews the training of psychiatric residents at the Centre as part of its overall review of the training program for University of Toronto psychiatry residents.
- A number of different types of inspections of our facilities, at least on an annual basis, which are required by law, licensing requirements, or accreditation standards. With the exception of those conducted by the Centre's own Joint Health and Safety Committee, these inspections are carried out by external bodies (e.g., fire department, public health).
- Internal reviews of program and department functioning and effectiveness. Currently, the Centre conducts the following reviews:
- A quality assurance program for service delivery that includes reviews of client records and surveys to measure client satisfaction.
- Three referral source surveys over each two year period, covering the three major streams of service (prevention; voluntary treatment; mandated services).
- Formal outcome/evaluation studies on an ongoing and specific basis.
- Collection of service statistics for each service.
- An annual employee opinion survey.
- Annual program reviews of all programs and departments.
- Review by the Clinical Risk Management Committee of all risk incidents and reports, including the Serious Occurrence roll-up report that is sent annually to the Ministry of Children and Youth Services.
A summary of the results of each year's Quality Management and Improvement activities can be found on the Centre's website.
440 Jarvis Street
Toronto, Ontario
M4Y 2H4
Tel: 416-924-1164
Fax: 416-924-8208
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1645 Sheppard Avenue West
Toronto, Ontario
M3M 2X4
Tel: 416-633-0515
Fax: 416-633-7141
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Website: www.hincksdellcrest.org
Email: info@hincksdellcrest.org
Charitable Registration No. 10694-9845-RR0001
A sister organization of the Centre, The Hincks-Dellcrest Institute, established in 1986, is dedicated to helping develop the body of knowledge in the field of child, youth and family mental health, and provides advanced, post-specialty training for children's mental health professionals. As a resource to the broader community, the Institute has established both a national and international sphere of influence.
The Foundation is a sister organization of the Centre and is the active fund development arm of the Centre. The Foundation focuses on fund raising for innovative service projects, research, and education. The Foundation is a separate corporation with its own Board of Directors, and is a Registered Charitable Organization (No. 89449-2487-RR0001)
The Hincks-Dellcrest Centre is a United Way member agency and receives funding for a range of prevention services. As a member agency, the Centre also runs an annual internal employee fund raising campaign.
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