This toolkit includes three Good Practice Guides with practical tips for planning accessible and inclusive events—both in-person and virtual—for the diverse communities that receive and provide mental health and substance use services. While much of the guidance can be applied more broadly, the toolkit is specifically designed to support the planning of events such as presenter series, knowledge-sharing sessions, system planning meetings, and partner engagement activities. Clinical events, such as group psychotherapy, are not covered, as they involve different planning needs.
These guides were developed by the Provincial System Support Program at CAMH. If you have any questions, please get in touch with Jacob Wolframe, Consultant, Equity Practice, at Jacob.wolframe@camh.ca.
Part 1: Planning an Inclusive and Accessible Event
Learning objectives:
- define disability and accessibility
- design events in a way that lessens inequities and barriers to access, and
- learn to broaden the concept of inclusion to encompass not only disability but also the inclusion of additional communities who experience structural barriers to access.
Part 2: Equity Considerations for Inviting Presenters
Learning objectives:
- explore the power dynamics of event planning
- learn best practices for equitable inclusion of diverse presenters and for designing presenter lineups reflective of the diversity of the mental health and substance use sector, and
- identify approaches to making event lineups and formats more accessible to marginalized communities, including people with lived and living experience of mental health and substance use challenges.
Part 3: Equitable and Anti-Oppressive Facilitation
Learning objectives:
- identify the characteristics of good event facilitation
- define principles of anti-oppressive and equitable facilitation, and
- explore examples on how to apply these principles when facilitating events in the mental health and substance use sector.
About the Provincial System Support Program
The Provincial System Support Program (PSSP) works with communities, service providers, and other partners across Ontario to move evidence to action to create sustainable, equitable, system-level change. With staff situated across the province, PSSP is on the ground collaborating with partners to build a better system through our work in implementation, knowledge mobilization, evaluation, data management systems, health equity and lived-experience engagement.