CYMH organizations have embraced EDI programs for many years; a commitment that continues today. We have diversified our boards, developed EDI programs, provided training, hired consultants, and collected identity data, all to address systemic inequity.  At CCTB, we have travelled a similar path; However, the analysis of identity data, when correlated with service completion rates, outcomes, clinical incidents and duty-to-report, reveals discrepancies between our journey’s efforts and the actual results. While our intentions suggest success, the data suggests there is significant room for improvement.
This presentation, rather than misrepresenting our progress, seeks to share how we have failed and what we have learned in failing well.  We will share how our service delivery system and associated expectations placed on marginalized groups doesn’t adequately consider the systemic barriers and colonial legacies.  We will share how our insights are reshaping how we listen, learn, deliver services, and define treatment.

Learning Objectives

1. Intention versus real change: In the EDI space, good intentions and effort.  

2. How to fail well: Progress over perfection is the ability to embrace one’s failure, as an individual, as an organization, as a system as a source of insight and change. 

3. Recentering the storyteller: the meaning of data is shaped by the eye of the beholder. The data narrative can be used to reinforce white supremacy or challenge it depending on what frame of reference you look through.  

4. We alone do not create genuine progress; we must continually and critically assess our world views, our motives and our actions. Through whose lens are we measuring and defining change?