Youth CI Spotlight:
Halton Granter’s Roundtable
Written in collaboration with Hilary Duff. Hilary is a journalist and communications consultant who works with teams worldwide to share stories of positive change. She's also the author of Planetary Health Case Studies: An Anthology of Solutions, a publication commissioned by Harvard University to illustrate the connections between human health and man-made environmental change. Hilary can be reached at www.hilaryduff.work.
This spotlight was written based on interviews conducted in August 2020. Youth CI is a partnership between the Laidlaw Foundation, Innoweave, The McConnell Foundation, and the Government of Ontario. It supports collective problem solving by providing groups with information sessions, workshops, coaching, and grants.
Reaching your 18th birthday should be a moment to celebrate, not a cause for alarm. Unfortunately that’s not always the case for the 800 to 1,000 young people in Ontario who age out of the child welfare system each year. A collective created by the Halton Granter’s Roundtable is looking to change that.
An initiative of the Oakville Community Foundation (OCF), the Halton Granter’s Roundtable started as a group of funders. Rather than funding community programs in silos, the Roundtable wanted to identify ways to collaborate, address priority needs in the community, and create a more substantive impact to benefit local charities and the people they serve.
“It was about seeing where there was the greatest need and gaps,” says Frances Pace, Director of Fundholder and Community Engagement with OCF. After engaging researchers and meeting with charitable organizations, addressing the many barriers faced by youth exiting care quickly rose to the top of the Roundtable’s list. The Halton Region is tremendously diverse, affluent in parts but home to significant inequality gaps and poverty, especially for young people, single moms, and marginalized communities.
In Oakville, 1 in 8 youth under the age of 24 live in poverty. That figure is more alarming still for youth exiting care—1 in 4 youth—many of whom face challenges in accessing education, employment, and training. “It zeroed in for us that this was a huge need,” explains Frances. “Youth come out of the foster care system but then find themselves without the necessary supports.”
Under Ontario’s child welfare system, youth ‘age out’ of government support when they turn 18. “These youth have all the same decisions to make as their peers: whether to go to school, get a job, or where to live, but they do not have the same amount of familial or other supports. The way the system is set up assumes that at age 18 the young person is good to go, but as we all know this time of life is more complicated than that,” expands Gillian McLaren, OCF’s Office Manager.
What can be missing, Gillian says, are the support and connections to help youth succeed with what comes next. Coming together with the Halton Children’s Aid Society, local youth, and other service providers, the Halton Granter’s Roundtable decided that collective impact was the best approach to address this urgent, multi-layered challenge.
In spring 2018, the Halton Youth Collective for youth exiting care was created.
Big challenges, collective approaches
Collective impact is a collaborative approach to problem solving. “It’s not about having a network of folks talking about what they’re doing in a related space,” says Lynn Fergusson. “It’s about asking ‘what is it that we’re trying to achieve together that we couldn’t do on our own?’”
Lynn is a Partner with Social Impact Advisors and a coach with Youth CI. One unique aspect of the Youth CI program is that grantees receive both coaching and financial support to develop and launch their collective impact projects. Lynn has been working with the Halton Youth Collective since its genesis. While the Oakville Community Foundation brings together the diverse group of service providers and funders of the collective, it’s Lynn who keeps the group focused on their goals.
With coaching from Fergusson, the collective has honed in on the question of what they’re doing and how. That’s led to the creation of an impact statement to guide the collective’s work: “By 2022, 90% of youth, 18-24, supported by Children’s Aid Society Halton, are satisfied with their education, employment, and/or training.”
The collective operates as a sort of resource hub for young people and Children’s Aid Society case workers. It’s made up of representation from the Halton Granter’s Roundtable, a team of youth, and 25 groups representing a range of social services, from housing to education, mental health to employment and training. With its diverse membership, the aim of the collective is to address any need that a young person exiting care may have.
This could be finding a place to live, applying for a job, being paired with a community health worker, and more. As well as helping young people navigate the complex web of social services, the Halton Youth Collective also aspires to lead systems change—addressing the barriers that may be keeping young people from finding work or assessing whether there are enough apprenticeship opportunities available, for instance. These systemic issues could then be the target of policy recommendations or inspire a spin-off program led by a member of the collective.
Next steps for collective impact
The Halton Youth Collective launched its pilot program in September 2019. Focused on the needs of 26 youth, the one-year pilot tests the collective’s approach, assesses the difference it makes, how much it costs, and which components are successful and which need tweaking. As part of the pilot, Halton Children’s Aid Society also matched the 26 youth with mentors, many of whom have lived experiences similar to their youth mentee.
Once wrapped, Frances and Gillian hope the pilot’s approach to supporting youth exiting care can serve as a model for others. The collective’s work is also aligned with the policy agenda at a regional level—one of the seven priorities of the Halton Community Safety and Well-Being plan is to support youth exiting child welfare services.
The Halton Youth Collective also hopes to continue its coaching with Lynn Fergusson, and plans to apply for Youth CI’s Execution grant to support the creation of a longer-term program shaped by the learnings of the pilot.
Young people—whether they grew up in the child welfare system or not—have diverse needs, talents, and aspirations. Whatever the challenge they’re looking to dig into, Youth CI-supported groups aren’t intimidated by this level of complexity. They also recognize the importance of working together to make a difference in their community.
“[Collective impact] is a commitment that way,” summarizes Lynn. “It’s a big investment of time and energy so you want to be in it for the long haul and believe in the significant change you’re looking to make.”
