Every year Lake Ridge Community Support Services recognize staff that exemplify the values of our organization in exceptional ways through the Culture & Spirit and the James Reaume Award and this year was no different. With a plethora of deserving individuals, we consider ourselves extremely fortunate to have an extremely committed team.

Here is how we recognized exceptional performers in 2021.

The Culture & Spirit Award

The Culture and Spirit award was created to recognize staff who embody and consistently demonstrate the culture and spirit of Lake Ridge.  Some of the criteria included:

• Reminding others of their strengths, being supportive and helpful to others

• Perform above and beyond normal expectations to benefit the community at LRCSS

• Creates, promotes and participates in activities that foster the LRCSS culture

This year’s nominees were:

Christina Sanford

Christina embodies what a role model should be at LRCSS. She is a fantastic leader, teacher, clinician. Performing above and beyond normal expectations Christina’s work is not limited to the clinic in the day. She cares so deeply for the staff and clients that she makes sure programs, documents, ebinders, and Treatment Integrities are ready and available for her team to be their best at work.

Christina is Lake Ridge personified. She is the one you will find getting into any costumes, participating in spirit days and figuring out ways to encourage and get others to do the same! She is a dedicated clinician who continues to individualize encouragement for each staff member. She is part of the Diversity, Equity and Belonging group, she exemplifies each word of that group and makes sure no one is left out. A truly wonderful human who will make sure your ideas are heard and realized. Christina is the kind of employee any organization would be proud to have on their team.

Congratulations Christina!

  

 Sasha Jansz

Sasha is a role model who exemplifies balancing professionalism with personableness. She is always on hand to answer any questions, provide support in whatever way she can, and is always looking out for the best interests of the clients and the team. She is very much a team player and will go out of her way when training new staff to make sure they feel comfortable and confident in their skill set. 

Sasha supports multiple clients, while organizing, leading and facilitating a social skills group. She’s worked hard to expand her skill set to better support her client's goals and created new systems and tools to help support the organization and efficiency of her team members.

 Sasha is a warm presence who is always readily available to talk to and bounce ideas off of. She ensures that everyone that she works with feels like an equal and that their ideas are respected and valued. She will go out of her way to support and provide the necessary training and materials for her team.

Congratulations Sasha!

 

Trish Johns

Trish has embodied and actively demonstrated our LRCSS culture this year. Trish has been with our agency for over 6 years and has developed and established wonderful working relationships with everyone she encounters in our LRCSS family.  She can be counted on for endless support and knowledge. And everyone who interacts with her is left with a feeling of appreciation for her eagerness and willingness to assist and work collaboratively.  When reflecting on our LRCSS culture of emphasizing collaboration, recognizing and utilizing other strengths Trish is a wonderful role model to all.  

Trish provides our team with the steady support that they know they can lean on when things are challenging are the most important.

Congratulations Trish!!

This year’s recipient of the 2021 Culture and Spirit award: Jamie Carpenter

Jamie demonstrates a positive attitude with both clients and colleagues and is always striving to find unique and creative ways to encourage interaction between clients, and fun ways to engage her team. Jamie is the first person to let you know when you have done a great job and often boasts about her colleagues and cheers them on as they meet their client’s needs.  It is important for her to make her colleagues feel acknowledged and cared for - a quality that is appreciated by everyone around her.

Jamie consistently answers the call 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. 

Jamie has been with LRCSS for over 6 years and has grown with our agency becoming a role model for our culture by consistently showing kindness 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!  

Congratulations Jamie Carpenter

James Reaume Award

The James Reaume Award of Excellence, also referred to as the Jim Reaume award, was created in 2013 to honour Jim Reaume’s dedication, values and contributions.  Jim was the founding Executive Director of Lake Ridge Community Support Services, over 30 years ago, and oversaw all aspects of the organization for 27 years.  When Jim decided to retire, in 2013, this award was created to honour Jim through recognizing staff who demonstrate excellence through their clinical work and a passion for the vision of Lake Ridge Community Support Services, which is a commitment to treatment, education and research.

Although Jim is no longer with us, his memory lives on with those of us who knew him and his dedication to the agency and the field of intellectual disabilities is still seen every day.  

This year we had 5 nominees:

Tarisha Singh

Tarisha has provided a wide range of services, across multiple programs & modalities with LRCSS; This includes but is not limited to: intensive, consultative, mediator-based, children and youth groups, adult education groups, virtual, in-person, and addressing a diverse range of target behaviours.

She has a passion to support staff to build their knowledge and experience with complex cases.

Her ethical lens ensures that she is making decisions in the best interest of the clients.

A strength of hers is her ability to carry a calm and professional demeanour during sensitive and urgent matters; she genuinely listens and supports finding creative solutions outside of the box.

She has been integral to supporting the development of fee-based services from conducting initial assessments to streamlining processes to create more efficient service from the lens of the customer experience.  

She is devoted to building capacity with Ministry funded group homes to ensure adults with Intellectual Disabilities have access to appropriate services, rights are not restricted, and are in compliance with Quality Assurance Measures; this also includes supporting educational and training needs and providing recommendations on various committees including rights restriction and restraint reduction. 

Tarisha is a truly valued member of the Lake Ridge team.  Congratulations Tarisha!

Jamie Booth

Jamie exemplifies excellence in a wide range of areas! Over the past 5 years, she has continued to grow and catalyze service-level improvements within her role and across Lake Ridge. This is no easy task as her role within the Community Networks of Specialized Care - Central East, Short Term Crisis Behaviour Consultation Service has required her to pivot and adapt and grow as her cases continue to increase in complexity. Reaching 5 years within this role is commendable and has continued to put LRCSS on the map as cultivating clinical excellence.

Jamie has expanded her skills, as needed, to ensure that her adult clients have the highest quality services we can offer within the short-term model of the program.  She leans on others when needed and is always willing to provide opportunities for others to learn together. She often looks at the literature, monitors message boards at LRCSS and externally, as well as keep an eye out for new training/workshops that directly benefit her clients.  In doing this she has afforded numerous opportunities to build capacity for all staff at LRCSS to learn together (e.g., ACT Immersion Modules Club), expand linkages (e.g., established LRCSS membership at Durham Connect table for excessive 911 use) and access specialized consultations with experts in the field such as Dr. Gould, Dr. Kolu, Dr. Piazza, and Nicholas Maio-Aether). She is solution-focused and has led several pilots to test out or develop better ways to conduct assessments that are efficient and effective.

 Any client that receives services from Jamie will receive behavioural services that meet top standards within the constraints of her short-term program.  Jamie models the highest levels of integrity in her work and her many many many collaborations with professionals to ensure ethical and evidence-based services such as urgent response & case coordinations, hospital nurses, social workers, first responders, child protection agencies, private group homes, and community behaviour service provider agencies in York, Simcoe, and Peterborough.  Community stakeholders often comment on Jamie’s exceptional work, which at times has contributed to LRCSS’ reputation for clinical excellence

Jamie often works with other teams to support effective transitions of clients at LRCSS and with other organizations. Her thorough plans have been commended by specialists she consults with and these plans have been key for individuals to access comprehensive care from mental health or medical services as well as to support decision-makers to guide residential and treatment options when needed.

Caroline Villanueva

Caroline’s passion for helping others extends to anyone she works with, whether this is with families during intake or multi-stakeholder teams. Her calm and steadfast personality is paired well with her passion for making a difference. As a role model of professionalism, she sets the stage for solution-focused discussions at any level from staff supervision to family meetings to tricky duty to report scenarios and case conference meetings. She has the courage to tackle new challenges within any role she takes on and does so with poise and enthusiasm.

Caroline demonstrates exceptional initiative with building rapport with the team she manages and the clients she oversees. She dives in head first with case planning and uses her strong organizational skills to ensure important tasks are completed in a timely manner and delegates tasks as she sees fit. Caroline is eager, ready, and willing in any role she takes on, and this remains true as she takes on managing the Anderson team this year. Caroline has proven herself to be a team player, going above and beyond her role, including working directly with clients when staffing became an issue. She is professional, articulate, and calm in times of high pressure.

Caroline is an invaluable clinician and leader on the Facing Your Fears Research team. As the lead Behaviour consultant, she engages with her team in a thoughtful, supportive, and encouraging way.  She has been involved in all aspects related to the start-up and delivery of the FYF program to Durham Families. During the first year of this OTF grant, she has engaged in research designing, team organization, and program development. She has been involved in planning, organization, and delegation of tasks to meet team goals and to enable the start of the FYF treatment group. Caroline worked very hard on the multiple tasks required to launch this new program at LRCSS in collaboration with her teammates and Clinical Manager. The program launch involved many stages, such as staff training, adaptation of the FYF in-person curriculum to a telehealth delivery modality, arranging and participating in multiple clinical meetings with the team, external psychologists and a BCBA -D, the development of the intake and consent process, participant tracking, Assessment and outcome monitoring, and very importantly, the actual Group Treatment implementation. Caroline also played a key role in the conceptualization and creation of the Research Ethics Board application for the intended research evaluation of the FYF Telehealth Program over the next two years. Caroline is a pleasure to have on this team.  Congratulations Caroline!

Heather Redmond

Over the last year, Heather has taken on many roles within Lake Ridge Community Support Services. She was a behaviour consultant who provided Fee-Based services on our Focused ABA team. While in this role she and her team provided quality, evidenced-based ABA services that were individualized to her clients’ and families’ needs, and these services resulted in socially significant changes that impacted not only the client and family but were recognized across other services and professionals. Additionally, Heather took on the task of revamping our agency-wide annual performance evaluations. Her hard work has resulted in tools that will further standardize the performance evaluation process while also being able to provide meaningful feedback, support, and supervision to staff to best support their professional development goals. Heather’s passion for staff training and development is only further emphasized through her participation in heading the organization of our RBT group supervision, the development of supervision shared drive containing a variety of tools and resources that can be used agency-wide, a ‘Meeting of the Minds’ supervision group to ensure up to date and quality supervision can be provided across the agency for RBT’s, BCaBA’s, and BCBA’s, participation in the development of a standardized and comprehensive onboarding process for staff new to Lake Ridge, participating in the piloting of LinkedIn-learning to support staff development in a variety of skill domains, and most recently in the initial development of a standardized tool to help support staff new to the behaviour consultant and behaviour technician roles. Congratulations Heather!

This year’s recipient of the 2021 Jim Reaume Award: Tanya Makela

Tanya discovered her passion in the field of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), when she first began working with children and adolescents with autism. Since then, she’s had the privilege 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 and 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 exemplifies all the values of the Jim Reaume award through her integrative treatment approach, dedication to furthering research, and commitment to empowering others. The combination of her extensive background in ABA and her commitment to approaching cases through a mental health lens create eclectic treatment methods that lead to positive outcomes for complex cases. 

She 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 that 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. 

At Lake Ridge, she has a passion for mentoring new clinicians to provide high-quality behaviour therapy services. She actively participates in applied clinical research, conference presentations, educational activities and collaboration with universities to advance the knowledge in our field. 

Tanya has exemplified the mission of LRCSS by creating opportunities for colleagues, community partners, and clients to reach their unique potential.

Congratulations to Tanya Makela for being this year's recipient of the Jim Reaume award.