Keystone Child, Youth and Family Services is expanding its counselling services across Grey and Bruce counties, bringing mental health care closer to families through partnerships with hospitals and community organizations.
Beginning this month, counselling will be available at Durham Hospital, in collaboration with South Bruce Grey Health Centre and Brightshores Health System. In Hanover, outpatient offices are now open at the local hospital, several local churches, and the Hanover CMHA Grey Bruce office.
The move reflects a broader shift in how Keystone delivers care.
“We often expect clients and families to come to us, and so we can deliver that strategy to really partner with the community, bring our services out of our main offices and into the community, so that kids and families and caregivers really cannot drive too far from service and within their community," CEO David Willis explained.”
The organization is also laying the groundwork for urgent access services in emergency departments, aimed at providing timely support for children and families in crisis.
"This region, which is huge, has not really had a well-defined crisis or urgent access mechanism for kids and families. So what we're trying to do in the next couple of months is to get in place an Urgent Access Program, which will really have two components," he added. "The first one will be a location within Owen Sound that kids and families can walk into and receive sort of urgent access services. There will also be opportunities for ongoing care within that centre. So if we catch up with clients and family, and they're a place where they are ready to move forward with treatment service, we will be happy to provide that up at that location, that is going to be on 4th Ave. The second part is, we're partnering with hospitals and other community partners, as a bit of a mobile service. So we will have a location in Hanover, a location in Durham, a location in Wiarton, and in Southampton. And if a client family really can't come to us, and they're really experiencing a pretty tough time, we will come to them."
“It really means that we're building what could be called the foundation of a hub so that, you know, measurable services are available within the same area, so potentially, kids and families and caregivers don't really need to go to multiple places to get the services that they need.”
Willis says demand for services has been rising, and Keystone serves between 2,500 and 3,000 clients annually, with plans to expand staff to meet growing needs.
"Kids who may have had slight anxiety or slight depression, COVID amplified that in a big way. And so by pulling kids out of the system and isolating them for up to three years, they didn't necessarily get the services that they needed in the moment," he explained. "And of course, when that happens around things like mental health, it compounds. And so three, four or five years later, we're seeing the acuity of some of these things, like eating disorders, depression, anxiety, trauma, we're seeing it at a level that we wouldn't necessarily have seen it prior to COVID."
“We are very pleased to be partnering with community organizations to provide safe and accessible counselling spaces for children, youth, and families across Grey and Bruce,” Willis said.
By offering care in both hospital and community settings, Keystone aims to reduce barriers, shorten wait times, and create a more responsive regional system of mental health support.
Keystone operates on a 12 million provincially funded budget and is working to get funding increased to meet the growing need.
