Webcast E07 – A Client-Centered Toolkit to Initiate and Enhance Collaborative Mental Health Care

Summary

Engaging clients in their care is a priority across healthcare settings because it improves care quality, lowers healthcare costs and enhances client experience and clinical outcomes. Engagement is also a mechanism through which equity and accessibility can be fostered as part of client-provider encounters and when planning and evaluating integrated care. We conducted a knowledge-to-action project that arose out of a rigorously conducted qualitative study and was guided by the tenets of participatory action research and user-centered design. The qualitative study began with five focus groups with 50 people living with mental health challenges in Toronto and Thunder Bay, followed by a team-based analysis and stakeholder consensus process, and then culminated with co-design sessions with 17 clients and 8 providers. Through this process we produced a toolkit that can facilitate dialogue about mental health challenges between clients and providers. The toolkit highlights client tips when navigating mental health care and can be a resource for providers in numerous clinical and community settings, as well as in the provision of virtual care. This session will: i) outline the rationale to co-develop client-centered practice tools (5 minutes); ii) detail the rigorous qualitative research, deliberative dialogue and consensus building process to refine the knowledge and principles that guided this work (10 minutes); iii) detail the toolkit contents and how it can be applied in diverse practice settings (10 minutes); iv) outline our co-design approach including how it can support program development and evaluation (10 minutes); and v) ensure time for attendees to think about how to apply the toolkit and co-design approaches within their care contexts (25 minutes).