The collective impact of ANCHOR

Many voices united for change Feature story If one person can make an impact, imagine what a focused team working with the community can do. The Community Safety and Well-Being Team within the City of Ottawa’s Community and Social Services Department is one of those teams making an impact – a collective impact, in fact. From left to right: Sarah Taylor (Director), Chiara Marcazzan (Communications Coordinator), Ikenna Mbagwu (Policy Research Analyst), Amy Johnston (Strategic Programs & Projects Specialist), Fowzia Mohamed (Program Coordinator), and Sawsan Al-Refaei (Manager, Community Safety and Well-Being).   Collective impact is a five-part model that brings community members, organizations and institutions together and modifies how they interact and connect with people to achieve social change. Through its structured approach, the model creates a network of committed collaborators and coordinates their actions to ensure that everyone is working from the same page to reach their shared goals. The Community Safety and Well-Being Office were inspired to continue a collective impact approach in its work to set-up the governance, infrastructure, and resources to implement the first phase of Alternate Neighbourhood Crisis Response (ANCHOR), which is being prototyped in Centretown. ANCHOR is a city-funded, community based, anti-racist mental health and substance use crisis service. Let’s take a closer look. A common agenda Establishing a common agenda means a group of partners collectively defining the problem and agreeing upon on a shared vision of what actions or solutions are needed to achieve it. “ANCHOR is a community-led initiative,” says Amy Johnston, Strategic Programs & Projects Specialist. “The service is grounded in collective impact approaches and significant research undertaken by the Ottawa Guiding Council on Mental Health and Addictions, whose research and robust community consultation laid the foundation for the safer alternate response model in the city. It is an incredible example of research and community voices come to life.” Leading up to ANCHOR’s launch this past summer, Amy’s focus was on project management and supporting activities towards the common agenda – a safer alternate response for individuals experiencing a mental health or substance use crisis. “I worked closely with City colleagues and ANCHOR partners – the Ottawa Guiding Council for Mental Health and Addictions, Centretown Community Health Centre, Somerset West Community Health Centre, and Community Navigation of Eastern Ontario/211 East Ontario – on the implementation. With these incredible partnerships in place around a common goal, we were able to launch a new model of mental health service that represents a shift in our system and prioritizes anti-racist, trauma informed and compassionate community-based care, ensuring those in crisis received an appropriate response.” added Johnston. Amy explains that, throughout her guiding role, “…it was imperative that the voices of the community were heard and that the community steered the wheel.” Shared measurements Like the common agenda, shared measurement requires a common and consistent approach on how data is collected and progress is tracked collectively for continuous learning, improvement and accountability. This is where Ikenna Mbagwu comes in. As a Policy Research Analyst, Ikenna works with collaborators on projects like ANCHOR to determine the project’s needs, develop performance indicators, and identify what data needs to be collected to track the progress over the course of the project. “To evaluate is to assess, to identify what worked well and what didn’t so that evidence-informed decisions can be made,” Ikenna explains. “A guideline - for lack of a better word – that typically enables this type of assessment is an evaluation framework. With ANCHOR, we developed the evaluation framework in partnership with the community collaborators. This framework will be used to evaluate what happens along the service delivery pathway to identify lessons learned and support ANCHOR’s continuous growth.” “Traditionally, people think of data as numbers,” Ikenna comments. “In addition to numbers, people’s stories are also important to contextualize those numbers – and ANCHOR’s evaluation framework is designed to provide that context.” Mutually reinforcing activities Establishing mutually reinforcing activities means coordinating actions across collaborators in a way that enhances each other’s work and maximizes the end result. Fowzia Mohamed, Program Coordinator, ensures that everyone knows what activities they are responsible for and that they have the information they need to succeed. “In the weeks leading up to ANCHOR’s launch, we worked alongside the community collaborators to test the whole system – everything from receiving simulated 2-1-1 calls to acting out mock scenarios for ANCHOR’s mobile crisis team to respond to,” Fowzia explains. “There were many scenarios to run through!” “These “demo days” were complex exercises and everyone involved had a specific role to play at a specific time. My role was to coordinate all of the players and work with the collaborators to ensure the testing days went smoothly and that results were documented.” Continuous communications Establishing continuous communications means building trust and strengthening relationships among the collaborators through consistent and open dialogue. Enter Chiara Marcazzan, Communications Coordinator. Chiara works alongside colleagues and community partners to develop communications processes and strategies. “Having these sorts of plans in place is essential, they ensure everyone is following the same path towards the same outcome, but they are more than that though,” Chiara reflects. “Creating these plans gives us the opportunity to get to know one another, the unique roles we play and how we can support each other.” Backbone support Establishing backbone support means having a dedicated team to coordinate the work of the collaborators and stay aligned with the common agenda – sounds familiar, right? Everyone on the Community Safety and Well-Being Team contributes to this part of the collective impact model. Amy, Ikenna, Fowzia, and Chiara are just a few faces on this larger team supporting the ANCHOR program. The implementation of a safer alternate response is one of the strategies included in the City’s Community Safety and Well-Being Plan and 2023–2026 Strategic Plan. 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