LATEST PROJECT NEWS

Provincial Ministry Vendor of Record (VOR)

As a pre-approved Vendor of Record with the Ontario government for organizational development consulting and training design and delivery services (OSS 074043); our firm supports program and policy initiatives, report writing, organizing and facilitating planning sessions, stakeholder consultations and designing, piloting and delivering training courses for provincial ministries. For a list of provincial clients and sample projects, refer to our client list and click on the link.

Organizational Development

We have been busy working with HRO Ontario, Project Management Centre of Excellence (PMCoE) developing and facilitating a new and highly successful 2 day Organizational Development course. The course focuses on the use of a new Diagnostic Tool to help staff assess an organization's need for change and a detailed Guide to Organizational Development. The goals of the training include:

• enhancing staff understanding of organizational design as one possible intervention to achieve transformation,
• orienting staff to the Organizational Design Guide and associated tools, and
• building internal capacity to deliver organizational design consulting services.

Age Friendly/Senior’s Community Planning

As the population of seniors grows, many communities are recognizing the need to accelerate plans to build a comprehensive system of community supports and services that are responsive to a wide spectrum of senior’s needs.

The municipality of Chatham-Kent is embarking upon the development of an Age Friendly Plan to strategically position itself for the demographic shift that is underway – and our team is supporting them in doing so. To date, a community consultation has been held to:

• Collect input on a vision of a desirable future for older adults/seniors living in Chatham-Kent,
• Provide key stakeholders with an orientation to the characteristics of age friendly communities, and
• Collect stakeholder insights on actions needed to improve the age friendliness of Chatham-Kent.

We will continue to support the Age Friendly Advisory Committee in developing and implementing a plan that promotes the presence of the eight characteristics of age friendly communities developed by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Autism Review

The challenges associated with supporting young children with autism are varied, often including lack of timely and appropriate services and interventions as well as a lack of support services for families.

In an effort to better understand the strengths and drawbacks of their current approach to the delivery of services to children 0 to 6 years of age with autism /autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Children First contracted with us to conduct a review to assess how their services were perceived and where they could potentially improve. The review findings will be used:

• To enhance understanding of the perception stakeholders have of the agency and its effectiveness in providing services to children with autism/ASD and their families, and
• To support agency wide discussion and assessment of the need to adapt its approach to service delivery to young children with autism/ASD and their families.

Local Immigration Partnership Action Plan

In this project, we worked with the Windsor Essex LIP Council to develop an Action Plan to support the implementation of the previously developed Local Settlement Strategy.

The resulting plan entitled Moving Forward [A Supplement to A Community Plan to Promote the Settlement and Integration of Immigrants in Windsor and Essex County] contains:

• A detailed Action Plan outlining key tasks/activities to be undertaken by the Council, including timeframes and responsibility centres,
• An approach to sustain collaborative community planning and support implementation of the Action Plan,
• A plan to enhance service and minimize duplication, and
• A strategy to develop performance measures, collect and report data and evaluate project success.

Poverty Reduction

We continue to support the Chatham-Kent Prosperity Roundtable and have recently helped them to develop a new Strategic Plan. Membership on three Working Groups to help move the Roundtables implementation agenda forward is currently being finalized.

Ontario Works Policies & Procedures

After completing a comprehensive service delivery and structural review of the County of Renfrew Ontario Works Program, our firm was subsequently engaged to review their existing Ontario Works Program Policies and Procedures. The project involved working in collaboration with a Policy Reference Group comprised of front line staff and management to develop a list of policies and procedures to be updated/developed, to review relevant directives and existing practices with the intent of identifying changes needed to align current practice with legislative requirements and further identify opportunities to improve program delivery.

The project was comprised of the following three phases of activity:

Phase 1: Review of Current Business Practices – Data Collection
Phase 2: Policy and Procedure Development
Phase 3: Staff Training

Ontario Works Self-Employment Training

We have  updated and are now once again delivering our comprehensive Ontario Works Self-Employment Training course, which includes a review of and interactive exercises pertaining to:

• The Ministry Self Employment Directive, Guideline and Workbook,
• Local policy and procedure (where they exist),
• What to look for in a Business Plan,
• Contents of the Record Keeping Kit, and
• Determining assets, tools of the trade and initial and ongoing eligibility.