Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare expands youth mental health care with first-of-its-kind program

A local youth mental health program has been expanded by Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare. CTV Windsor’s Travis Fortnum has the details.

As demand grows and cases become more complex, Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare’s Regional Children’s Centre (RCC) is changing how it delivers mental health care to kids in Windsor-Essex.

The centre’s Intensive Outreach Team has been rebranded and expanded under a new name — the Assertive Community Treatment Team for Children (ACT-C).

Staff said the shift brings the program in line with a model long used in adult mental health care, while tailoring it specifically for children as young as six years old.

“We can see families as often as each day, Monday to Friday, at their home if that’s what their care requires,” said DJ MacNeil, Director of the RCC.

“It’s a very assertive engagement and home team program.”

The team includes therapists and child youth workers who work together to support children and families where they live.

That can mean in-home visits, mobile appointments, or rapid responses to urgent needs, something MacNeil said is increasingly necessary.

“People are coming in less often with straightforward, ‘my mood’s not feeling so well,’ or ‘I’m feeling anxious,‘” he said.

“Now, it’s a lot of, ‘I have a significant history of trauma, and I don’t want to go to school.’ And there might be tension in the home.”

According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, nearly one in four youth in Canada had been diagnosed with a mental illness as of 2022.

Almost half of all mental health disorders begin before the age of 18 and two-thirds before age 25.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among those aged 15 to 34 — with rates among Indigenous youth five to six times higher than their non-Indigenous peers.

MacNeil said the changing landscape is being felt locally as well.

“We’re seeing higher than ever service volumes coming in,” he said.

Since launching nine months ago, the ACT-C program has supported more than 50 local families.

“We’ve had families where the child was excluded from school,” MacNeil shared.

“And over four or five months of seeing them every day, the kid could rejoin the classroom and have success at school.”

Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare is also a partner in the Crisis Response Team, launched with Windsor Police in April 2024.

The program pairs officers with mental health professionals to respond to crisis calls.

“90 per cent of these interactions did not result in an emergency department visit,” said Kevin Matte, Integrated Director for Mental Health Outpatient Services at HDGH.

The goal is the same across both programs — reduce reliance on emergency rooms and help people, especially youth, access the care they need in the right setting.

“When we can provide a strong support network to a family, they tend to do better,” MacNeil said.

He says ACT-C is already proving effective and that the RCC hopes to expand it even further as demand grows.

Families interested in learning more can call the RCC at 519-257-KIDS (5437).