Calgary’s Mental Health and Addiction Funding Allocations

Telling Their Stories: Mental Health Recovery and Prevention for individuals and families living with ASD: To bridge the gap between peer support & professional counselling by providing supportive "Talk Support" and "Peer Mentorship" sessions to facilitate mental health for adults with Autism.

Family Focused Therapy Program: To provide culturally sensitive therapeutic counselling, support services and holistic referrals to newcomer children, youth, and adults who have experienced trauma.

Supports for Immigrants and Refugees with Mental Health and Addiction Issues: A Culturally Sensitive Approach: To strengthen supports for immigrants dealing with mental health and addictions issues through increased customized culturally sensitive counselling and mental health awareness campaigns.

Recovery College Enhancement: To utilize Peer Support as an engagement and support mechanism for the delivery of Recovery- oriented mental health education (‘Recovery College’) to individuals and families in need.

Community Helpers Program for Immigrants’ Resilience: To build community capacity and train “community helpers” within the Farsi-speaking communities who can support the resilience of other Calgarians in distress.

2SLGBTQ+ Counselling and Natural Supports Program: To support 2S/LGBTQ+ mental health and wellbeing and enhance individual and community inclusion and resiliency.

Keeping the Circle Strong: To support Calgary and area Indigenous Elders & seniors with traditional teachings and ceremonies, language advocacy, basic need referrals, interpersonal relationships, and kinship development to decrease isolation, encourage community engagement, and adopt positive change for the well- being of the family circle.

Enhancing Counselling Services for Individuals Experiencing and Perpetrating Domestic Violence and Abuse: To serve victims and perpetrators of domestic violence and abuse through Men's Counselling Service and Community Services Counselling Program.

Journey's - Addiction Support for Women: To provide services aimed at reducing risk factors and facilitating successful transitions through recovery by delivering intentional pre/post treatment and wraparound supports.

Enhanced From Night to Light Program: To empower seniors and older adults with knowledge, skills, tools, and resources that promote strong mental health and resiliency.

IFSP Enhancement - Scaling Peer Support and Evaluation: To implement a virtual Intensive Family Support Program (IFSP) to improve health outcomes for both mental health and addiction patients and their families.

Enhanced Multi-Level Social-Emotional Support for Our Community: To provide a multi-tiered support program that improves clients' ability to cope with stress and connects them to natural supports and resources within their community.

TIES Healthy Minds: Multi-Cultural Mental Health & Wellness Support: To provide multi-cultural mental health intervention that meets the psychological needs of newcomers and other vulnerable Calgarians through strategies that address service gaps and barriers.

Tackling Newcomer Mental Health Needs by Linking All Cultures Equitably (LACE 3): To address persistent issues that impede newcomers from addressing their mental health and wellness needs by improving access to mental health resources, addressing service gaps, targeting high priority needs and creating systems change.

Youth Mental Health & Addiction Support Through Integrated and Enhanced Service Delivery: To provide individual and group mental health therapy within an Integrated Youth Services model to highly vulnerable youth aged 16-24.

Wellness Desk: To deliver mental health support via onsite social workers and service providers for vulnerable Calgarians confronting mental health and addictions challenges.

Bridging the Gap: To provide support, education, and systems navigation to 16-24 year-olds who struggle with mental health concerns (self-identified or diagnosed).

Mental Health and Addiction Systems Navigator: To help parents and caregivers of children and youth who are struggling with mental health and addictions concerns more effectively navigate the resources and supports available to them in their community.

Mental Health Clinician: To enhance and expand health and wellness services for families experiencing homelessness through the provision of mental health support and recovery.

Coordinated Older Adult Mental Health and Addictions Response: To provide targeted wrap around support to address mental health, addictions, social impacts and physical health of older adults.

Community Connect YYC- Enhancing Our Approach: To make access to timely, affordable mental health supports easy for Calgarians by providing a wide variety of affordable counselling services available via an easy-to-navigate website platform and empowering clients to choose the service that is right for them.

Nanatawiho Kamik (Cree for 'Healing Lodge'): To provide comprehensive mental health supports and services through a holistic, Indigenous lens for Indigenous peoples living in the city of Calgary.

Journey through Grief: To provide mental health and grief recovery support to individuals experiencing long term trauma caused by miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant death.

EXploitation Intervention & Transition (EXIT) Program: To provide immediate rapid-exit programming including housing, intensive case management, and comprehensive wrap-around support to women and girls 16+ exiting sexual exploitation.

Mental Health and Peer Support: To deliver mental health and peer support programs that support trans and gender diverse individuals and their families.

Harm Reduction family Therapist: To provide therapeutic supports for families to increase mental wellness and adaptive skills and create environments for optimal individual and family development.

Inglewood Opportunity Hub Recovery Team: To provide one to one harm reduction support to individuals experiencing addictions concerns between the ages of 15-29. The specialist also facilitates psycho-social groups.

Living Loss and Grief - A Journey to Awareness and Acceptance: To support caregivers to cope with loneliness, isolation, and burnout.

Alexandra Community Health Centre

Youth Mental Health and Addiction Integration: To provide individual and group mental health therapy within an Integrated Youth Service model to highly vulnerable youth aged 16-24.

$342,000

Antyx Community Arts Society

Natural Support Through Youth Community Art: To provide natural support programing through art/ hip hop projects that inspires youth to identify mental health supports in their community.

Telling Their Stories: Pandemic Mental Health recovery and Prevention for individuals and families living with ASD: To bridge the gap between peer support & professional counselling by providing supportive "Talk Support" and "Peer Mentorship" sessions to facilitate mental health for adults with Autism.

$80,002

Mental Health and Mentoring - Serving our Diverse Community: To build the capacity of staff, mentors and families in mental health resiliency to support children and youth from diverse communities, specifically racialized, Indigenous and sexually and gender diverse.

$93,897

Calgary Catholic Immigration Society

Centre for Refugee Resilience - Family Focused Therapy: To provide culturally sensitive therapeutic counseling, support services and holistic referrals to newcomer children, youth, and adults who have experienced trauma.

$299,435

Supports for Immigrants and Refugees with Mental Health and Addictions Issues: To strengthen supports for immigrants dealing with mental health and addictions issues through increased customized culturally sensitive counselling and mental health awareness campaigns.

$124,940

Canadian Mental Health Association - Calgary Region

Increasing Social Connections: To utilize Peer Support as an engagement and support mechanism for the delivery of Recovery-oriented mental health education (‘Recovery College’) to individuals and families in need.

$250,000

Centre for Sexuality Society

2S/LGBTQ+ Counselling and Support: To support 2S/LGBTQ+ mental health and wellbeing and enhance individual and community inclusion and resiliency.

$85,000

Enviros Wilderness School Association

Respite Care Connection: To provide wellness and relief for parents caring for children with mental health and social challenges, while at the same time building social skills and friendships for the children.

$150,000

Hull Services

Bridging The Gap: to provide support, education, and systems navigation to 16-24 year-olds who struggle with mental health concerns (self-identified or diagnosed).

$211,975 

McMann Youth, Family and Community Services Association

Journey's - Addiction Support for Women: to provide services aimed at reducing risk factors and facilitating successful transitions through recovery by delivering intentional pre/post treatment and wraparound supports.

$285,218 

Punjabi Community Health Services Calgary Society

Mental Health and Addiction Prevention Outreach Program: To provide community awareness, education and information to the South Asian community surrounding mental health, addiction and counselling services.

$102,000

Sagesse Domestic Violence Prevention Society

Peer Support Group & Individual Support Program: To provide group and individual support to vulnerable Calgarians impacted by domestic violence.

$46,205

Supporting Mental Health: to provide programs and workshops designed to provide a holistic approach to support Francophone families with their mental health and well-being. 

The Canlearn Society for Persons with Learning Difficulties

Multi-Level Social-Emotional Supporty: To provide a multi- tiered support program that improves clients' ability to cope with stress and connects them to natural supports and resources within their community.

$190,000

The Immigrant Education Society (TIES)

Healthy Minds: Multi-Cultural Mental Health & Wellness Support: To provide multi-cultural mental health intervention that meets the psychological needs of newcomers and other vulnerable Calgarians through strategies that address service gaps and barriers.

$200,000

Inglewood Opportunity Hub Addictions Specialist (Formerly Exit Youth Hub and Outreach Addictions Specialist): to provide one to one harm reduction support to individuals experiencing addictions concerns between the ages of 15-29. The specialist also facilitates psycho-social groups.

• United Way of Calgary and Area
• Alberta Health Services
• The Elders Knowledge Circle
• Calgary Foundation
• The Aboriginal Standing Committee on Housing and Homelessness
• Elizabeth Fry Society

Kitsii Gome Traditional Wellness / Healing Pilot Project: To offer holistic and traditional approaches to health and wellness paralleling western health and wellness approaches typically offered to the Indigenous population.

• FOCUS on Seniors
• Women of Vision Society
• Haiti Alberta Sports and Cultural Club
• Youth Empowerment and Skills (YES)
• Centre Nepalese Community Society of Calgary
• MissionsPH
• The Immigrant Education Society
• Calgary Immigrant Education Society

Weave: Community Innovation: To enhance sector collaboration among ethnocultural communities and immigrant serving organizations by strengthening linkages, to maximize combined potential to drive collective impact and foster change in the mental health system of care.

• Sagesse
• Street Cats Harm Reduction Society

Sex Workers Effective & Efficient Together: To collaboratively identify gaps in service options and address the distinct barriers experienced by sex workers in Calgary in accessing services for mental health and social wellbeing.

• Lionheart Foundation

Advanced Eating Disorder Community Training Program: To create an interactive web based advanced eating disorder training program for multidisciplinary primary care and community providers in the Calgary area.

• Families Matter

Positive Fathering and Mental Health Integration: To offer mental health therapies to and support substance abuse treatment as required by fathers identified through Families Matters programs and complete a quasi-experimental evaluation to identify the extent to which improved paternal mental health and/or substance abuse management affect the risk of child maltreatment, fathers’ child custody and access arrangements, and family court involvement.

• Calgary Board of Education
• Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research & Education, University of Calgary
• Centre for Wellbeing in Education
• Werklund School of Education

Development of a Universal Framework for Standardized Support Services for Children and Youth: To identify the skills, knowledge and competencies required to support adolescent mental health (ages 12-18) through the education system, resulting in a preparatory standardized program for student services and improved navigation of the mental health and wellness system for students and families.

• ActionDignity Society
• Child and Adolescents Addictions Mental Health and Psychiatry Program
• (CAAMHPP), Alberta Health Services

Improving Mental Health Treatment for Black and Racialized Youth: To improve clinical practices of Lionheart network therapists and those within AHS when it comes to serving the needs of Black and Racialized youth facing mental health issues.

• Calgary Cultural Women Association
• Royal Women Cultural Association
• Multicultural Senior Women Group
• Global Pravasi Seniors Society
• Indo-Canadian Community Association
• North Calgary Cultural Association
• South Asian Canadian Association
• Monterey Punjabi Seniors Society
• Al Hidaya Muslim Jamaat
• Ahmadiyya Muslim Women Group
• Shri Ravidass Seniors Society
• Nepalese Community Society
• SACSS

Building Mental Health Resiliency in visible minority Seniors & Women: To address the mental health needs of visible minority seniors and women living in the North of McKnight Blvd area through socializing activities, peer support, counselling and referral services for participants, and educational training workshops and awareness events for natural supporters and the community at large.

• On a Dime Transformation
• Simon House Recovery Center

Innovative Paths to Independence: Empowering Recovery, Promoting Agency, and Revolutionizing Employment Solutions: To improve addiction recovery outcomes by empowering individuals with barriers to meaningful employment by leveraging community and employer involvement to break down stigma while promoting a more compassionate and supportive community.

• Anacrusis

Trans Music and Voice: To foster resiliency through building community, connection, and confidence in trans and gender diverse children, youth and adults through various forms of musical expression.

• Collectively Tangled Counselling & Consulting

The Whole Entrepreneur: Incorporating Mental Wellness into Programming for Entrepreneurs Solving Social Problems: To provide mental health support through clinical services, knowledge sharing, stigma reduction, and capacity building for social innovators as well as the social innovation support ecosystem.

• Kindred

Trauma Counseling Collaboration: To address the need for longer term, barrier free trauma counselling services in the Calgary Community.

Wellness Webinar Series - Promoting A Healthy Community: To promote health and wellness as well as support the Korean community through a webinar series.

Linking All Cultures Equitably (LACE) to Address Mental Health Needs of Newcomers: To collaboratively address gaps in services and target unique barriers experienced by newcomers and ethno-cultural Calgarians in accessing services for mental health and addictions.

University of Calgary Recovery Community: To promote recovery from addiction, building community, and combatting addiction stigma on campus.

Vicarious Trauma Support Pilot Project: To implement a Vicarious Trauma Support Program for front-line workers.

Helping Parents Navigate Children and Youth Mental Health and Addiction Supports: To help parents of children and youth struggling with mental health and addiction effectively navigate available resources and supports within our community.

A Culturally Based Recovery Program for Urban Siksika Nation Members facing Mental Health and Addiction: To support Siksika Nation members residing in Calgary and dealing with mental health and addiction issues.

Calgary Chinese Mental Health Outreach Campaign: To promote mental health awareness and de-stigmatize mental health topics through an outreach campaign for the Calgary Chinese Community.

Mental Health Needs from long COVID: To create a music-based mental health and wellbeing program to immigrants presenting at a COVID-19 followup clinic with outreach into communities dealing with unmet mental health needs.

From Night to Light: To implement a self-care program for seniors and older adults to acquire transformative mental health strategies to mitigate Covid19 trauma.

Neighbourhood Walk and Talk for Immigrant Moms and Tots: To increase physical and mental wellbeing of immigrant mothers with young children through outdoor activities that foster social inlcusion.

G.L.O.W. (Group Learning Opportunities and Workshops): To provide inclusive personal development and wellness workshops for people with disabilities centered around Social and Emotional Development, Health and Wellness Strategies, and Community Engagement.

Promoting Family Mental Health through Little Red Reading House Visits: To incorporate mental health and wellness awareness component to family visits to  Little Red Reading House. 

The Colour Factor Ltd.

Community Care Circle: To provide an accessible virtual space for peer connection, healing and sharing mental health and wellness tools and resources specific to the unique needs of Black, Indigenous and Racialized communities.

$30,773

Culturally-Informed Community Helpers Program - A Change from Inside: To train and support existing “natural” helpers within the community, that help reduce mental health service disparity and bridge the informal and formal support for  Farsi-speaking communities in Calgary.

Wellness program: To  provide culturally relevant and responsive mental health and wellness services and early intervention of those experiencing mental health issues.

The Mental Game: To integrate mental health skills and knowledge building into a community based soccer drop-in program.

Culturally Appropriate Mental Health Intervention (CAMHI): To provide culturally appropriate clinical mental health interventions for immigrants of East African Origin.

The Buds in Bloom Digital Storytelling Project: To increase wellness and community belonging of parents of children with disabilities through digital storytelling.

Ethiocare Youth Mental Health Worker: To provide mental health and addiction outreach services for youth and families across the East African communites in Calgary.

Specialized Caregiver Coach for Caregiver Capacity: Coaches to deliver a five week 'COMPASS for the Caregiver’ program and provide support to caregivers.

Mobile Street Health Team: Connecting vulnerable Calgarians accessing Emergency Medical Services to social supports and community connections through health navigators.  

Recovery Coaches: Providing peer support for individuals with substance use disorder to navigate community resources and receive tailored care.  

Treaty 7 Elders Sharing Circles Calgary and Beyond: Program to virtually connect Elders through online sharing circles.

Shelter Diversion: Supporting individuals entering the shelter system for the first time to navigate their mental health and addiction needs and connect them with the appropriate resources.

Language Link to Mainstream Mental Health: Providing language support for newcomers to access mainstream mental health services.

Service Navigation for Vulnerable Calgarians: Bridging and connecting Calgarians to the best resources for their specific needs across different agencies.

Ambassador Pilot Program - 9 Block and Stephen Avenue: Ambassadors have an essential role in promoting and supporting a safe, clean, and inclusive downtown.  

Anxiety Workshops for all Calgarians: Training to deliver Cognitive Behavioral Therapy programs for anxiety.

Speak Up, Speak Out: Open Up about Mental Health: A train-the-trainer approach creates mental health ambassadors that can connect with their communities.

The Community Wellness Desk at the Calgary Public Library: In partnership with organizations such as Wood’s Homes and the DOAP Team, the Library will deliver mental health support via onsite social workers and service providers for vulnerable Calgarians confronting mental health and addictions challenges.

Piloting the Comfort Collection Mental Health Bundle: Client families will receive a book bundle with three curated books and parent resource providing strategies to promote children’s mental wellbeing through reading, and access to training videos.

RESILIEN Confidential Wellness Wayfinder: Connecting Calgarians with relevant mental health services and peer support through a website/app.

Older Adult Men's Wellness Workshop and Peer Support: Delivering wellness workshops for older adult men to build knowledge, develop skills, and connect with regular, ongoing peer support meetings

Autism Spectrum Disorder Screening and Education Program: Education and research initative to reduce stigma and better support people with Autism that are accessing services in the homeless sector.

Accredited Wilderness Addiction Treatment Program: Delivering a 30-day Indigenous land-based-teaching treatment program for Indigenous youth.  

Creative Kits for Youth: Mental health focused kits and programming for youth.

Seniors Mental Health and Addictions Outreach Team: Providing short term, in home, care to seniors to increase protective factors, identify risk, navigate resources, reduce isolation, and create safety action plans.  

Automated Self-Service Health Website: Connecting Calgarians to available mental health and addiction services, including community care options.  

East Meets West Mental Health Campaign and Forum: Campaign that focuses on mental health of the South Asian community and forum/conference facilitated by leaders and experts in the South Asian and multicultural Mental Health targeted improving the delivery of services for the South Asian ethnic group.

Recovery Employment Cooperative: A social enterprise cooperative which will improve recovery and employment outcomes for people transitioning from addiction treatment to the workplace.

Online Connection Tool and Booking Solution: Connecting Calgarians to counselling services and appointment bookings with multiple organizations in one online tool.

Cultural Healing Tools for the Racialized Community: Three cultural healing events that draw on and share the rich wellness practices within African, Indigenous, and South Asian cultures.

Nurture Your Narrative: A Mental Health Storytelling Workshop: Storytelling project to create digital stories about people's lived experience with mental health, the importance of removing stigma, and how to improve the system of care. Includes a showcase to share the stories with the community.

Pedagogy-based Emotional and Mental Wellness Intervention Pilot for Newcomers: Infusing strength-based, emotional wellness pedagogy into the teaching, classroom management, and lesson planning at settlement agencies.

Immigrant Family-based Interpreters for Emotional Wellness Supports: Introducing information into Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) courses about how to better support family-based interpreters.

Learn Together, Recover Together, and Resilient Together, South Calgary: Collaborative community development art project to build community and reduce stigma for SHARP foundation clients.

Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST): Integrating ASIST training into the Faculty of Nursing curriculum.  

South Asian Youth Mental Health (SAYMH) Outreach Ambassador: Training South Asian youth to become mental health ambassadors for the South Asian community.