2.7 Vignette: A Transdisciplinary Community Mental Health Program Providing Clinical Care to Street-involved Youth in Hamilton

The Good Shepherd Youth Services Community Mental Health Program operates within a framework that prioritizes partnerships while aiming to provide quality care through a transdisciplinary model. The model focuses on triage, assessment and treatment; providing clinical interventions to disenfranchised youth in Hamilton, Ontario. The program has the following key components, which we will describe in this paper: service delivery approach (i.e. referral process), tailored care pathways, inter-professional collaboration (i.e. with consulting psychiatrists), mental health education, ongoing evaluation and knowledge sharing (i.e. information exchanged with community partners), committed clinicians and contribution from the clients. The following case study identifies and describes an approach to clinical care that can be adapted elsewhere.

Publication Date: 
2016
Publisher(s): 
Canadian Observatory on Homelessness
Editor(s): 
Naomi Nichols; Carey Doberstein