Transform your services with our toolkit and promote mental health recovery in your organization!

The Walk the Talk toolkit will launch in Fall 2021 and is designed to help your organization transform its mental health services to a recovery orientation. This orientation shifts the focus beyond individual symptoms and empowers people to live a hopeful and fulfilling life regardless of the challenges posed by their mental health.

Our online toolkit will guide your organization through selecting, planning for and implementing a new recovery innovation based on the Canadian Guidelines for Recovery-Oriented Practice. Walk the Talk is focused on Chapter 6 of these guidelines - Transforming Services and Systems. This toolkit uses a participatory approach and is grounded in implementation science. We are now recruiting three (3) organizations to participate as “Early Adopters” of the online toolkit.

Why become an Early Adopter?

Integrating recovery principles into services has become a policy priority in Canada. Walk the Talk reflects these priorities and will help your organization provide impactful services in line with current guidelines. We have also designed the toolkit to be:

  • Collaborative: Everyone’s voice will be represented! Various stakeholder groups within the organization, including service users and family members, will work together when planning & implementing the innovation.
  • Effective: Our process has already been tried & tested in 7 sites across Canada with promising results!
  • Innovative: This transformative approach to mental health services will increase your organizational capacity in recovery and implementation science.

What will Early Adopters do?

Early Adopter organizations will identify a person from within their organization to act as a facilitator and use the toolkit within their organization. Facilitators will be coached by the Walk the Talk research team on how to use the toolkit throughout the process. The research team will be available for follow-up coaching until September 2022.

Facilitators in each Early Adopter organization will:

  1. Recruit an implementation team made up of managers, service providers, service users and family members.
  2. Take the implementation team through a 12-meeting planning process. It is through these meetings that the implementation team will select a recovery-oriented innovation and develop an action plan to implement it.
  3. Coach their implementation teams as they oversee the implementation of the innovation in their organization.

Who can become an Early Adopter organization?

Organizations across Canada that provide services to adults with mental health challenges.

How much time will Early Adopter organizations need to invest in this project?

Early Adopter organizations will be committing to a 12-month process. Your organization will need to make the following provisions:

  1. 1 facilitator with a time commitment of 2 days per week.
  2. 1-2 managers, 1-2 service providers, 1-2 service users and 1-2 family members on the implementation team, each with a time commitment of 2 days per month.

Early Adopter organizations will also be required to provide financial compensation to service users and family members on the implementation team.

Please contact the Principal Investigator, Dr. Myra Piat, info@walkthetalktoolkit.ca by September 30th 2021, if you are interested in becoming an Early Adopter organization, or if you have any questions.

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