Growth & Innovation
Message from Our Executive Director
Sandie Hoskin, Executive Director at Lake Ridge Community Support Services
Despite the challenges of these unprecedented times, the team here at Lake Ridge Community Support Services (LRCSS) remained committed to helping people, of all ages, with intellectual disabilities and autism to maximize their potential. The year 2021-22 presented us with continued adventures related to the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions. Our staff, clients, caregivers, Board of Directors and community continued to demonstrate strength and resilience as we moved through this last fiscal year.
We continued to provide virtual service where possible and returned to in-person service when it was appropriate and safe. Our teams have continued to be creative with providing virtual services to make them as accessible, interactive and supportive as possible.
We continued to see growth and change in our services for children and youth with autism spectrum disorder. At LRCSS, we expanded our ability to offer more fee based service while continuing to support our clients in the OAP. The Ontario Autism Program (OAP) continued its transition. In early fall, we partnered with Grandview Kids, Resources for Exceptional Children and Youth, and the Region of Durham forming the OAP-Durham to offer the Caregiver Mediated program. This program is designed to help parents and caregivers find new ways for their young children with autism (12 to 48 months) to learn new skills and achieve goals in social communication. In mid-March, we also started the Entry to School program within this same partnership. The Entry to School program is designed to help children with autism spectrum disorder prepare for a successful transition to Kindergarten or Grade 1.
Our children and adult services funded through the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services (MCCSS) continued to be offered throughout the year, either in person or virtually. We are beginning to consider the changes over the next 8 to 10 years as outlined in the Journey to Belonging document created by the MCCSS. Journey to Belonging is the long-term vision for developmental services where people with developmental disabilities entirely belong in their communities and are supported to live the lives they choose.
In February 2022, LRCSS engaged with CMCS Consulting Services to start our strategic planning journey. We focused on capitalizing on our strengths and capabilities throughout the past year to increase our capacity and ensure that we continue to be a high-performing, individualized and ethical organization. We focused on program development and this increase in capacity while maintaining the highest service delivery standards and operational quality. We are looking forward to the process and outcomes of strategic planning as we move forward to help guide our next steps for agency growth and development.
I would like to recognize and thank our incredible staff for the continued effort, hard work and dedication to supporting our clients, caregivers, community and each other. I would also like to thank our clients, caregivers and community for their patience and flexibility as we moved between virtual and in-person service, understanding the COVID-19 requirements for providing safe environments for everyone. Lastly, I would like to recognize our Board of Directors for their continued support, feedback and direction for our agency's growth and evolvement.
Over the past two years, we have grown tremendously and are proud of our accomplishments and flexibility. The safety and well-being of our staff, clients, and caregivers were our top priority. We are looking forward to 2022-23 as COVID-19 restrictions ease and allow us to safely offer more in-person client and group services.
Sandie Hoskin, Executive Director
Client Service
Funded Programs
Clinical Director, Karen Chartier
Child and Adult Funded Services
Our team provides individualized ABA services to more than 300 children, youth and adults each year through funding from the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services. These services focus on skill-building, reducing challenging behaviour and caregiver training to support clients to reach their full potential. Our team was able to pivot between virtual and in-person services as we adjusted our response to COVID-19 to ensure our clients had access to quality services. We offered many virtual adult education groups this past year. These groups included Adapted Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Anger Management, Healthy Sexuality, Building Lasting Friendships, and Dating 101. Waitlist pressures for our adult-funded services continue to be a concern with 217 clients waiting for service. The focus of the upcoming fiscal year will be to develop strategies to address the waitlist.
In addition, we were able to successfully support 25 children last year who presented with complex needs and needed additional ABA and coordinated services.
Funded Program Statistics
Adult & CHILDREN/YOUTH Funded Program Statistics
An average of 6 new clients join our adult funded waitlist each year. Adults wait an average of 495 days for service. 217 adults are waiting for funded service. We served 321 adults. 21 children are waiting for our funded service. We served 52 children in 2021-22.
Client Service
Ontario Autism Program
The Ontario Autism Program (OAP) offers support to families of children and youth on the autism spectrum up until 18 years of age. The OAP is currently transitioning to a program that is comprehensive, needs-based and family-centred. The needs-based services and supports currently available are Foundational Family Services, Caregiver-Mediated Early Years, Core Clinical Services, Entry to School, and Urgent Response Services. LRCSS is proud to provide all these services to OAP children and youth.
Foundational Family Services (FFS)
At Lake Ridge Community Support Services, OAP families can access Foundational Family Services through our dedicated Foundational Services team. These services are provided for families registered with the OAP and are individualized to meet each child’s unique needs. These services include:
Family and peer mentoring via our Facebook Group
ON-DEMAND Family and Caregiver Workshops & Resources via our Foundational Family Service Portal
Brief Targeting Consultations with a Behaviour Consultant
Learn, Explore & Play (LEAP): Play-based Learning for OAP families with children under six and their caregivers
Navigating the Education System: Supporting your child with autism at school
Caregiver, Parent & Peer Mentoring Groups for peer support.
This past year we had 249 unique families access our foundational services. We provided 1,388 units of services to these families.
249
Unique Families Served
1,388
Units of service delivered
FFS Portal
At the end of fiscal 2020-21, we transitioned foundational workshops for parents and caregivers to an on-demand portal. Parents and caregivers are extremely busy and need access to tools and information on their terms. Our portal provides them on-demand access to streaming video and downloadable tools wherever and whenever they are needed.
Foundational Family Services Portal 2021-22 Statistics
Consultative Services
As OAP continues to transition; we are pleased to continue serving 18 clients in our individualized consultation services virtually and in person. These clients and caregivers continue to build skills through consultation with a Behaviour Consultant as they are waiting to transition into the new needs-based OAP core services.
Intensive Services (OAP-I)
Renee Ruddock, Clinical Director
The Ontario Autism Program - Intensive services have had a successful year with several clients beginning or continuing their transition into school with success. As our clients' hours increase at school, they are decreasing within our program. Despite the barriers COVID-19 created for our teams, they continue to be resourceful and creative. Our teams demonstrated this creativity by implementing telehealth sessions, virtual caregiver training sessions and virtual social skills training while transitioning some clients back into service who had been off for months due to COVID-19. The OAP-I staff continue to be dedicated and devoted to their clients. They continue to develop new curricula to optimize learning for clients who are getting older and require a different level of service through dyads and group learning.
Families continue to wait for their invite for their child’s assessment to determine their financial support and placement in the new needs-based OAP core services. Regardless of their evaluation, the OAP-I program will end by March 2023.
Entry to School Program
The beginning of 2022 had a busy start due to an expansion of LRCSS services. In partnership with the lead agency Grandview Kids, Resources for Exceptional Children and Youth and Durham Behaviour Management, we collaborated to design, develop, and implement the Entry to School Program (ETS). The ETS program falls into the category of early years support, one of the four core services offered by the Ontario Autism Program funded by the Ministry of Children Community and Social Services. Between January to March, the team procured eight locations across the Durham Region, furnished and prepared classrooms, and recruited 31 classroom staff to prepare for 164 clients to enter the program before the end of April 2022. The children eligible for the program are those who have a diagnosis of ASD, and who have never attended school before. The average enrollment age is three years old. LRCSS's role in the partnership was to staff the eight sites and manage the clinical and classroom teams, directly implementing the group program.
The expansion was a success, and as of April 2022, eight sites were offering morning and afternoon group programming to cohorts throughout Durham. One hundred and twenty families accepted the Ministry's invitation to join the program. The focus of the first six months of the program is on:
Communication
Play
Social interaction
Functional routines
Behavioural self-management
Pre-academics, learning and attention
The next six months will focus on the children’s transition into school. LRCSS is so proud of all of the staff within the partnership who were involved in the design, development and implementation. The addition of eight new teams has been a wonderful success due to our staff’s ability to research, assess, collaborate and motivate. This expansion highlighted to our community partners and families what dedicated and passionate staff we hire and employ at LRCSS.
Caregiver-mediated Early Years Program
The Ontario Autism Program, Durham (OAP-D) partnership provides caregiver-mediated programs through Lake Ridge Community Support Services, Grandview Kids, and Durham's Regional Municipality. The Province of Ontario invites families directly via written letters to participate in the caregiver-mediated programs, from which there are three programs to choose between. Lake Ridge Community Support Services is proud to be providing Project ImPACT as part of the OAP-D.
Project ImPACT (Improving Parents As Communication Teachers) uses a Naturalistic Developmental-Behavioural Intervention (NDBI) which combines Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) and the communication and developmental fields. Applied Behaviour Analysis is a proven technique for teaching children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) social and communication skills. By utilizing ABA techniques naturally within the families’ day-to-day activities, children are better able to generalize newly acquired social-communication skills and continue to use them after the program is complete. This past year LRCSS provided service to 21 families in Project ImPACT.
21 families served in Project ImPACT
Client Service
ABA Classroom
Over the past year, we continued to provide services to students with autism spectrum disorder in two partnership treatment classrooms with the Durham District School Board (DDSB). Throughout the year we successfully pivoted between virtual and in-person classroom support in response to the pandemic allowing students to continue to access the treatment classrooms.
Client Service
Fee Based Program
We continued to offer high-quality, individualized and group services virtually and in person at our locations throughout the pandemic. All our services are individualized to meet client and family goals. Our group services consisted of children and teen social skills groups such as, Secret Agent Society, and Teen Dating 101. We also experienced significant growth in our waitlist for services. The management team is committed to developing strategies to be able to serve more clients from our waitlist.
Fee Based Service Statistics
249 Fee based clients served. 72 Group clients. 325 clients waiting for individualized services. 203 clients waiting for group services.
Client Acquisition & Retention
Service Delivery Method
Satisfaction Survey Responses
93% of clients felt our service was flexible and individualized to their needs. 95% of clients felt that during their service, they learned strategies they could use on their own. 91% of clients would recommend this service to others. 93% of clients felt that their Clinician was responsive to their child/client's changing needs over time. 93% of clients felt that if needed, they would use this service again, and would recommend this service to others.
Financial Statements
2021-2022 Financials
The below financial statements reflect the fiscal period between April 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, and are subject to approval of the Board of Directors
| REVENUES | $7,913,167.00 |
|---|---|
| MCCSS | $1,722,421.00 |
| OAP | $5,005,237.00 |
| Fee Based Services/Partnerships | $1,154,270.00 |
| Fundraising/Donations/Grants | $31,239.00 |
| EXPENSES | $7,896,558.00 |
|---|---|
| Salaries and Benefits | $6,340,319.00 |
| Travel/Training | $165,241.00 |
| Purchased Services | $87,836.00 |
| Supplies | $308,775.00 |
| Phone | $3,000.00 |
| Rent/Utilities | $491,003.00 |
| Brokering | $119,706.00 |
| Admin | $321,442.00 |
| Other | $59,236.00 |
| BALANCE | $16,609.00 |
|---|
Growth & Innovation
Agency Growth & Development
Over the past year, we have increased our team by 33 new employees in response to new OAP programs and an increase in demand within our community for quality, individualized behavioural services. We are excited to have these new members join our team. LRCSS is committed to the performance and growth of our employees as an integral part to providing the highest standard of service to our community.
Onboarding New Staff
LRCSS started an initiative to ensure we were promoting our culture with every new hire. The team developed procedures and infrastructure to improve our previous process. The team set LRCSS new hires up for success. Some of the data from new staff are below:
As a result of the onboarding system, staff noted:
100% agree they received sufficient shadowing and training
100% agree they felt valued by co-workers and supervisors
100% agree they feel satisfied by their role at LRCSS
83% agree they have the resources needed to be successful in the role
83% agree that LRCSS motivates them to go beyond what they would in a similar role elsewhere
92% would still work at LRCSS in 2 years
100% would recommend LRCSS as a great place to work
The pie chart below shows that we have 35.9% new staff over the last year and 64.1% of our team were promoted. This influx of new staff and transition into new positions would not have been as successful if not for the latest systems and strategies in place for those starting new positions.
Employee Certifications
Our incredible team continues to work towards the goals of furthering their knowledge, education and certifications through the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB). Throughout the year 6 more staff achieved their Registered Behaviour Technician certification and 5 more staff became Board Certified Behaviour Analysts.
New Board Certified Behaviour Analyst (BCBA)
Kristen Brennan
Stephanie Lui
Radhaa Roopnarine
Megan Zonnenberg
Joanna Salvagna
New Registered Behaviour Technicians (RBT)
Nadia Dakwar
Amanda Ewles
Sasha Jansz
Lauren Scott
Olivia Yu
Davida Trotta
Internship
Due to the success of our Behaviour consultant internship last year, our Board of Directors has supported us to continue the program for another year. In addition, LRCSS submitted a grant to receive funding to provide an internship program to behaviour technician’s with the skill set and motivation to become Registered Behaviour Technicians. In October, 5 candidates were selected. As of April 2022, 3 of the 5 have completed the process and have become Registered Behaviour Technicians. The other 2 will be credentialed by the end of the summer.
Staff Training
LRCSS is committed to the professional development of all our employees as part of the agency's culture to ensure all staff have opportunities for continuous learning and development. This is done through formal training events, Linkedin Learning, CEU events, and presentations to other professionals.
5 First Aid/CPR training sessions held in 2021-22. 16 Safe Management Training sessions totalling 156 training hours. 167 staff professional development training events attended by LRCSS staff externally totalling 1,456 hours and 44 Internal Professional Development
Training Events totalling 156 hours of training in 2021-22.
Accredited Continuing Education (ACE)
LRCSS is an Accredited Continuing Education provider with the Behaviour Analyst Certification Board. Over the past year, LRCSS has continued to offer professional learning opportunities to clinicians. LRCSS hosted 11 continuing education events and issued 394 certificates to participants.
LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning has proven to be a valuable resource for our staff’s professional growth over the past year. Our staff can identify training through on-demand content for many different professional goal areas independently, and with support from their manager. LRCSS has also developed many customized learning pathways in content areas specific to the agency to support an environment of growth and learning for all staff.
96 Staff participated in LinkedIn Learning Programs completing 287 courses in fiscal 2021-22.
Stone Soup Conference
The 2021 Stone Soup ABA Conference was a smashing success. Not only did the team outperform every metric for success in comparison to 2020 but the team managed to raise an additional $16,326.95 for the ABA for All Fundraising campaign in the process.
“I can’t think of many times in life where I’ve been this inspired before 7am.”
Stone Soup Conference by the numbers. 7 incredible speakers. 471 attendees. 453 app downloads. 1,700 BACB CEUs were issued. 7 Amazing Sponsors. Over $16,000 was raised for ABA for All.
Growth & Innovation
Research & Grants
Ontario Trillium Fund Grow Grant-Facing Your Fears (FYF)
This 3 year grant allows us to offer a free cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) group named ‘Facing Your Fears’ (FYF) to children and adolescents who reside in Durham Region, from ages 8 to 12 diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The FYF group was specifically designed for youth with ASD who are verbally fluent and struggle with significant anxiety. The group is focused on building skills to manage anxiety so participants are better equipped to engage in social situations and take advantage of opportunities within their community. We are currently in our second year of funding and to date, we have provided 9 sessions to 34 children.
91% of caregivers surveyed would recommend this service to others.
Workforce Capacity Grant (OAP)
LRCSS applied for a grant through the OAP to create an ABA training team to improve coordination efforts for effective and efficient onboarding and training of new clinicians across the agency. The team will coordinate, oversee and implement training and development of new and current clinical staff. Two positions, a Training Coordinator and a Training Facilitator were approved. Both started in their positions in February 2022. The funding is in place until January 2023.
Transition Support Grant (OAP)
Transition funding, through the OAP, was provided to help support additional staff training, consultations for service change as well as staffing supports (e.g., Human Resources, Clinical Coordinator, Service Navigator) across the agency to develop and grow our fee based services. The funding was confirmed in October 2021 and was utilized by March 31, 2022.
Agency Highlights
Recognizing Our Employees
Jim Reaume award - Tanya Makela
In December 2013, the Jim Reaume award was introduced at Lake Ridge Community Support Services. This award recognizes an employee who meets one or all of the below requirements:
The Candidate is committed to providing quality service, and this is recognized in their day to day interactions with their clients.
The Candidate purposefully seeks out opportunities for furthering their knowledge in the field of ABA.
The Candidate facilitates or participates in evaluation research.
Tanya Makela was the recipient of the Jim Reaume award for 2021. She’s had the opportunity of working with hundreds of children, youth, and adults with intellectual disabilities and autism spectrum disorder. As a Board Certified Behavior Analyst she is always striving for excellence, wanting the very best outcomes for clients she serves, their families and caregiver mediators. She is a strong advocate for adults with Intellectual Disabilities to ensure that they are treated with dignity and respect and have access to quality services and support. She continues to stay connected with the latest research, which she incorporates into our service delivery models.
Tanya is deeply dedicated to furthering the knowledge of staff, community partners, and mediators by providing leadership and training opportunities both within LRCSS and with community partners. She contributed towards a manuscript which was recently published in the Journal on Developmental Disabilities which investigated the impact of Quality Assurance Measures on interventions and challenging behaviour in adults with Intellectual Disabilities. Tanya also delivered “The Art of Merging Behaviour Analysis and Consulting” through the Ontario Behaviour Analysts Community of Practice (OBACOP).
In addition to being a BCBA supervisor, she also oversees other BCBA supervisors, provides agency training from an ethical lens, and is an active member of the Diversity, Equity, and Belonging Committee. Her devotion to research opportunities is demonstrated by successfully obtaining the Ontario Trillium Foundation Grow Grant. She understood the capacity that LRCSS clinicians had to serve children with ASD and anxiety using a combination of ABA and CBT principles. With her vision, this grant has materialized into the virtual delivery of the Facing Your Fears program which has allowed children and their caregivers to develop the skills necessary to manage levels of anxiety that would otherwise negatively impact their quality of life. Through the Research Ethics Board approval process, she has facilitated opportunities for those on her team to build skills related to conceptualizing each component of systematic program evaluation; ensuring adherence to a stringent research design and high-quality service for families.
Tanya has exemplified the mission of LRCSS by creating opportunities for colleagues, community partners, and clients to reach their unique potential.
Culture and Spirit Award 2021 - Jamie Carpenter
The Culture and Spirit Award was created in 2018 to recognize staff who embody and consistently demonstrate the culture and spirit of Lake Ridge Community Support Services. Some of the criteria for this award include:
Reminds others of their strengths; is supportive and helpful to others.
Creates, promotes and participates in activities that foster the Lake Ridge culture.
Performs above and beyond normal expectations to benefit the community at Lake Ridge.
Jamie Carpenter was the recipient of the Culture and Spirit award for 2021. She demonstrates a positive attitude toward both clients and colleagues and is always striving to find unique and creative ways to encourage interaction between clients, and fun ways to engage teammates. Her competitiveness makes for a lot of fun and humour.
Jamie is the first person to let you know when you have done a great job with something. She is not afraid to brag about her colleagues or cheer them on in any situation. It is important for her to make her colleagues feel acknowledged and cared for, a quality that is appreciated by everyone around her.
Jamie thrives when working on a team and will always rise to the occasion when her support is needed, whether it's providing coverage for other teams/clients, gently nudging everyone to participate in group team bonding activities (like dressing up for Halloween), helping to organize, set-up, and facilitate a brand new social skills group, facilitating new and different learning opportunities for her clients, supporting the generalization of skills of other clients and always checking in on the mental health of her colleagues.
She has a remarkable spirit that is infectious and she uses her gift to motivate and remind others of a job well done. She has been with us for over 6 years and has grown with our agency. Jamie fosters and role models teamwork and most of all caring and compassion not just for her clients and their families but for all those who cross her path. Regardless of what is going on in her day, she is always ambitious in her efforts to bring a smile to all her interactions. Jamie fully understands our mission of harnessing the potential of others and is their biggest cheerleader!
Shout Out Awards 2021-22
The Shout Out Award is a monthly award for employee recognition. The award is a chance for co-workers to nominate and recognize each other for something great and/or notable they have done within the month. It could be just about who the person is and why they are great, could be something they have done that should get recognition, could be for something they have achieved, years of service with the agency or any other reason that person deserves a ‘shout out’.
Length of Service Awards
Starting in 2013, each year Lake Ridge Community Support Services recognizes staff who have reached a significant milestone in their years of service with the Agency. LRCSS truly values all of its staff and is very proud to have such dedicated employees with high levels of experience and knowledge. The following staff were acknowledged this year for their years of service:
Eleanor Gibson
Tanya Makela
Michelle Brown
Tarra Mcphail
Amy Andrews
Allyson Mitchell
Heather Redmond
Alisa Geller Obouhov
Olivia Yu
Babira Raveendran
Jamie Booth
Sivakame Yogeswaran
Nadia Dakwar
Divya Gossai
Danielle Woodcock
Katherine Krampert
Melissa Legree
Mikaela Charlebois
Meghan Petch
Shawna Souch
Agency Highlights
Committees
Diversity, Equity and Belonging Committee
Over the last year, our Diversity, Equity and Belonging priorities have been focused on creating a diversity statement (below), staff training, staff surveys, reviewing our website and social media content, reviewing our service intake measures, and actively participating in a community of practice. We are also proud of the Land Acknowledgement statement gifted to us by an Indigenous Elder.
Diversity Statement
We acknowledge that this work is a continual process of reflection and change. Lake Ridge Community Support Services is committed to providing an environment that fosters compassion and creates a community of belonging in which employees and service recipients feel supported and respected. This community of belonging is one in which everyone is treated with dignity and promotes the voices/opinions of people from different cultural, socioeconomic, and developmental backgrounds. We continue to provide an environment free of harassment, discrimination, and violence and continually grow and adapt our knowledge and flexibility. Fostering a community of understanding and belonging promotes our commitment to grow and evolve as one diverse community that is stronger together.
Fundraising Committee
The fundraising committee, just like all other services and committees at LRCSS, has had to pivot and create new opportunities to fundraise in our new socially distant society. The barrier of not hosting public events did not stop the team from raising money for our ABA for All Campaign.
The chart below outlines the committee’s success over the last year:
| EVENT | DATE | AMOUNT RAISED |
|---|---|---|
| Back Pack Raffle | August 21, 2021 | $965.00 |
| Stone Soup | October 22, 2021 | $16,326.95 |
| Domino's Family Pizza Night | November 30, 2021 | $635.00 |
| Give to Gift Raffle | December 15, 2021 | $2,217.00 |
Social Committee
As LRCSS navigated through the various shutdowns and pauses in face-to-face services, the social committee provided some enjoyment and appreciation for our staff. At our summer staff appreciation, they created a Choose Your Own Adventure virtual event, including an hour of trivia competition, yoga, and guided painting and ended with The Famous Durgy, an entertainer and a magician bringing virtual amazement and laughs. For our Holiday Event, the virtual theme continued, and we were fortunate enough to book Meg Sopher to share the “Secret Sauce” of life with us which included some memorable hashtags like #OYOG which translates to “Own Your Own Growth”, and #PTG, meaning “Post Traumatic Growth”, coming out the other side stronger than before!
Agency Highlights
Operations
Privacy
Inclusivity and assent were two of the main priorities that LRCSS focused on this year. Clients have a right to be informed regarding the risks and benefits of the consent process. Sometimes clients do not have a full understanding of the information they are given which is necessary to give informed consent. We are taking steps to ensure that clients who do not consent for themselves, are still very much involved in the consent process. Through discussions and adapted forms, we aim to help make the conversations and consent/assent processes clearer for clients to help them understand the context of what they are assenting to. This provides clients the right to choose to agree or disagree to various details about their service. These adapted forms, used alone, do not determine consent, it accompanies a consent form signed by the person who is authorized on the client's behalf to give consent.
Our Privacy Officer is a part of a community of health sector Privacy Officers, which allow us to keep updated on advancements in the current legislation that help to guide and inform our decisions around confidentiality and privacy of personal information not only for our current and past clients but also for our employees. There will be multiple workshops that our Privacy Officer will be attending throughout this next fiscal year, some of the topics include: How to conduct Privacy Impact Assessments and adding gamification to your privacy office.
We will continue to put privacy at the forefront of all of our business practices in order to provide inclusive, quality, individualized service.
Cyber Security
There has been tremendous growth at LRCSS over the last year. With this growth comes an increasing challenge to maintain a secure system to protect our client data and maintain privacy. This challenge is amplified when employees are expected to be able to work remotely, connecting to home-based networks with unknown security.
To achieve this goal, most new devices in the agency are now Chromebooks. These devices are tightly integrated into our Google Workspace system. They are automatically protected by on-device encryption and mandatory 2-Step Verification to ensure that malicious actors cannot access our data.
By minimizing the attack profile of our devices, we are achieving robust protection wherever a device is used while at the same time increasing integration, speed, and overall efficiency. All of this is supported by an established disaster recovery plan.
Social Media
Since 2019 Lake Ridge Community Support Services has been aggressively growing our online presence by revamping our website and growing our social media presence with a focus on Facebook. This fiscal we added Instagram as well. Our strategy is rooted in serving our community through 3 pillars: Advocate, Empower and Involve.
Advocate for acceptance and understanding of our clients within the community.
Empower clients, caregivers and the community with information on services and actionable insights.
Involve our community through fundraising and capacity-building initiatives.
Social Media Statistics
This fiscal our Facebook Page reached 71,105 users and we had 1,686 fans. Our Instagram page was started in April 2021 and reached 4,523 users with 238 followers. Our tweets delivered 46,100 impressions while our Twitter profile had 278 followers.
Sources: April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2021 - Meta Business Suite Insights, Twitter Ads Tweet Activity
This fiscal our website had 46,138 sessions, our Google Business Profile was visited 33,612 times and our Search Ads delivered 668,000 impressions online.
Sources: April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2021 - Google Analytics, Google Business Profile Manager Insights, Google Ads Manager
Agency Highlights
Brokerage
Lake Ridge Community Support Services (LRCSS) continued to broker funds for the DSB services which are operated through Sunrise Youth Group (SYG).
SYG was able to remain open to in-person programming for the majority of the fiscal year. The Day program, however, did have a brief closure from April to May 2021 due to COVID-19 concerns. The In-house Day Program members affected by the closure were able to utilize the Virtual Day Program.
The In-house Day Program was able to safely return to full capacity member attendance by December 2021. SYG was able to have 28 members (7 full-time, 21 part-time). SYG was able to accept 4 new members for the Day Program through the exposure of the Virtual Day Program and three members decided to move on either due to lack of interest or travel-related issues. The Day Program currently has a waitlist of 21 individuals interested in specific days and/or are waiting to graduate high school to join. This number decreased over the last fiscal year as several Day Program spaces became available and were accepted by individuals on the waitlist.
Previously, the In-house Day Program and Virtual Day Program were offered as hybrid programs. Both programs would be simultaneously facilitated. In December 2021, the Virtual Program expanded to its own independent program being solely facilitated by a team of virtual staff. The virtual program is accessed by In-house members on their off days or days they felt unsafe to attend in-person, as well as Recreational members. There is great interest in the Virtual Day Program and it receives consistent attendance.
The Day Program has four full-time staff, two part-time virtual staff members and fourteen on-call staff who ensure that SYG is providing outstanding support for all members.
The Day Program strives to foster friendships, promote independence, and encourage acceptance. The staff provides remarkable programming for the In-house Program and Virtual Program. The programming is creative and innovative while modified to meet the varying needs of the members. The staff has been able to seamlessly adapt programming to meet In-house and virtual criteria.
The Ministry of Children, Community and Social Service (MCCSS) annually funds $63,972.67 to offset the cost of $217,617.56 to operate the Day Program and the balance is paid through member fees. Over the 2021-2022 fiscal year, MCCSS was able to provide additional financial support of $58,467.03 to offset the additional costs of COVID-19 and virtual programming.
Durham Staff Training Committee
LRCSS also brokers the Durham Staff training Committee fund on behalf of MCCSS funded adult developmental service agencies in the Durham Region. The committee is comprised of members from all agencies and works together to plan and access additional training throughout the year. Throughout the pandemic, the training committee was able to continually adapt and organize many virtual training events to support learning and development for all staff across the sector. Topics offered over the past year included mental wellness, skill development for challenging behaviour, Fierce Conversations training, as well as training for a deeper understanding of psychotropic medications and their impact. Over the past fiscal year, 357 Durham Region staff received training through the funding of $40,000.
Agency Highlights
Partnerships and Collaboration
Lake Ridge Community Support Services continues to partner and collaborate with many agencies to provide services and education. These partnerships allow us to continually engage and improve service for everyone to have the opportunity to reach their unique potential. Collaborating with our partners also allows us to continue to develop and engage in research opportunities to inform the future. Thank you to our community partners.
