Communications Advisory Team (CAT):
- The CAT team continues to work on improving the orientation to the work of the CYPT for new members. Welcome videos and email journeys have been developed and team members continue to contribute valuable feedback to the process. Recommendations from the CAT team regarding Family Compass have been forwarded to stakeholders and the CYPT website has been undergoing some changes based on recommendations from the team. A new menu system and simplified language on the website has been in the process of being updated for the last several months.
Continuous Professional Learning Committee (CPLC):
- The CPLC has recently concluded a two part learning series with Dr. Barbara Ward, who presented her experience developing trauma informed resources for the community – mostly recently for the WRDSB. The team met on October 22nd to develop their own community/environment scan to identify trauma informed resources and gaps across organizations serving children, youth and families. Pamela Fehr joined the group to discuss how qualitative research methods can complement a more quantitative survey-focused tool. The team is also experiencing an expansion of new members from the schoolboards and from other community organizations.
Data Research and Evaluation Team (DRE):
- At the end of September the DRE team held a meeting to discuss a number of ongoing community and DRE-related initiatives. These included updates from Communitech on the Future of Cities initiative (including the 4 data-related challenges that they identified with input from DRE members), Dr. Dillon Brown and Ben Brown’s (University of Waterloo student) insights from their research using the 2020 Youth Impact Survey data and Megan Kelly’s (University of Waterloo student) literature review on the concept of belonging – which is the cornerstone of the upcoming Case for Belonging. The team continue to discuss ways to produce accessible data from this the 2021 data and how to bridge data disaggregation practices across interested organizations. The group will be reconvening in November.
Well-Being Shared Measurement Database (WBSMD):
- In ensuring that there is sufficient community participation, the WBSMD organized focus groups and 1:1 conversations with organizations interested in piloting their exploratory evaluation tool on program-level belonging. Expanding on the success of the focus groups, the group has launched a program logistics and requirements questionnaire to better grasp the needs of each individual program prior to the launch of the evaluation tool in 2022. The team continues to meet with similar initiatives and with members from the non-profit sector and from academia to improve their planning and project design.