As a provincial network of 42 members serving women who have experienced intimate partner violence, as well as offenders, through twenty-one of Ontario’s Partner Assault Response (PAR) programs, we believe meaningful change is needed to prevent intimate partner violence and femicide.

Family service agencies play a vital role in Ontario’s mental-health eco-system. Individuals, couples, and families come to us for a variety of reasons, but often because the services they need do not exist for those without the means to pay for a private therapist.

Family Service Ontario strongly agrees that a “major shift is needed” in the provision of mental-health supports to address the number of people falling through the gaps in care.

The next wave has started, and it is looking like a tsunami, with a lack of resources to respond. The next wave is the increased need for mental health, couple, and family therapy services.

As a community-based counselling agency and a member of Family Service Ontario, NCCC provided outstanding service to 1,000 individuals and families each year.

Universal access to mental health services is a welcomed theme in this election. Every day we experience firsthand individuals, youth and families who fall through the system’s gaps in care.