What You Can Do

There are many ways for you to support and promote the mental health of Ontario's children and youth. Below is only a sampling of the many opportunities throughout the year for you to honour children and youth, and champion their right to mental health and well-being.

• Make a donation to support Children's Mental Health Ontario
• Become an Individual Member of Children's Mental Health Ontario
• Speak to your MPP
• Get involved in Children's Mental Health Week events
• Pass it on
• Speak to the media

Speak to your MPP

You can educate decision-makers and help influence child and youth mental health policies by speaking to your Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP). In fact, they often prefer to hear from ordinary citizens rather than organizations; so call your MPP and ask for a meeting, or send them a letter.

Resources you can use to speak up:

• Find your MPP's contact information here.
• How to Speak Up - The Canadian Mental Health Association (Ontario Branch) has developed excellent online materials on how to speak to your MPP.
• Tip Sheet: Do's and Dont's of Child Advocacy - 22 'must have' tips, published online by The Canadian Paediatric Society.
• Template Letters, created by Parents for Children's Mental Health, that you can send to your MPP.

Get involved in Children's Mental Health Week events

You can organize or participate in an event for Children's Mental Health Week. This year, Children's Mental Health Week will be celebrated from May 2nd to May 9th. Why not work with a Children's Mental Health Centre to raise awareness in your community through a creative event?

Some ideas from last year:

• Parents for Children's Mental Health hosted an exciting poster campaign and contest - the winning posters were assembled into a 2010 calendar called Through the Eyes of Our Youth (click here to see a few samples; PDF, 3 pages).
• Open Doors for Lanark Children and Youth and St. Francis de Sales School hosted a Brave New Minds walk, which is a re-enactment of the walk in Gayle Grass's book, I Can Fix It.
• Lake of the Woods Child Development Centre distributed seed packets of shasta daisies and forget-me-nots - with labels containing messages about Children’s Mental Health Week.

Pass it on

Email information on this site to someone you know:

• Send the link to CMHO's most recent pre-budget submission to your MPP.
  The link is http://www.kidsmentalhealth.ca/documents/res_cmho_final_prebudget_submission_2010_final.pdf;
• This page contains family-friendly resources about child and youth mental health problems; send the link to a friend who may be worried about their child.
  The link is http://www.kidsmentalhealth.ca/parents/resources_parents.php;
• There may be an event on this page that someone you know would like to know about.
  The link is http://www.kidsmentalhealth.ca/news_and_events/events.php.

Speak to the media

Speaking to the media is a great way to educate people in your community, raise awareness, and get the attention of decision-makers.

You can:

• Write an op-ed (opinion/editorial) piece: CMHA (Ontario)'s website takes you through all of the steps in the process, from 'how to place an op-ed' to 'what to do after you've written your op-ed';
• Write a letter to the editor: They can be used for different purposes such as responding to a previously published letter, editorial or article, sharing a point of view, carrying a message forward or attempting to influence politicians' perception of public opinion. They're efficient and cost-effective; simply ensure that your message is focussed, of interest to your community, and short. Here are 15 Tips from the National Post's letters editors to help you get started;
• Call in to a television or radio talk-show: It's a great way to get your message to thousands of listeners. If they're covering a topic that's relevant to child and youth mental health, make an effort to call in and share short, concise statements about current issues. Or, you can try contacting the program's producer to urge him/her to cover a specific child and youth mental health-related issue.