Safe Relationships, Safe Children
In 2013 Vancouver Coastal Health Regional Mental Health and Addictions began work on a Provincial project in collaboration with the Ministry of Child and Family Development and the Ministry of Health called Safe Relationships Safe Children. The project is aimed at meeting the recommendations of the Representative of Child and Youth to “Develop adult healthcare and child service systems that promote child safety and wellbeing of families affected by serious untreated mental illness, problematic substance use and/or domestic violence.”
Several communities in Vancouver Coastal Health were chosen to participate in the first two phases of the project. Vancouver Coastal Health Regional Mental Health and Addictions enlisted the help of the Lean Transformation Services team to help understand the challenges that families, children and youth are experiencing in accessing mental health and other important services in their communities.
Through sessions held in a number of communities, families shared their personal journeys and experiences of navigating through the health care system and made suggestions on how access to and quality of services could be improved. With support from the Lean team, this information was captured in visual family journey maps that highlighted interaction with care providers and identified opportunities for more family-centered care.
Although the families were initially nervous they all expressed gratitude for the opportunity to make their story heard and to make improvements to the system. These sessions have facilitated important learning and insight regarding how various service providers, including the health authority, can better work together to meet the complex needs of children and families experiencing substance abuse, mental health and domestic violence in their communities.
Thank-you Tim Hayward, Bev Fearnehough, Sonja Sinclair, Tomasz Majek and Pauline Deane for leading this work. For more information on tools, techniques and support to map the patient experience please contact VCHLeanEducation@vch.ca
karen Arthurs
This looks great and would love to do this with one of the programs I manage for Youth Pregnancy & Parenting YPPP, what is needed to get this started?
Marta Filipski
Thanks Karen for your comment.
Our Regional Lean Transformation Services team works on a number of patient engagement initiatives to capture and better understand the voice and experience of our patients and families. We’d be happy to give you an overview of what we do and see if this would be a good fit for your project. If you’re interested in finding out more please feel free to contact me at marta.filipski@vch.ca.
Thanks!