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TERMS OF REFERENCE
Toronto Service Area
Knowledge, Information and Data – System Performance Management Working Group
1. vision: What will the ideal kid system look like? (part of workplan)
1. Background and Purpose
As the lead agency for community based child and youth mental health services in the Toronto service
area, East Metro Youth Services (EMYS) is responsible for ensuring:
 Infants, children and youth receive the right mental health service at the right time, and
 The effectiveness and performance of core service agencies and the system meet the objectives
of Moving on Mental Health
In order for these objectives to be met, EMYS has established four working groups to support the
implementation of MoMH in Toronto. These working groups meet regularly and monitor the ongoing
work in each area.
The purpose of the k/i/d/ System Performance Management working group is to provide
recommendations to East Metro Youth Services regarding best practices in the areas of information,
evaluation, IT and data management. These recommendations will inform child and youth mental health
services for Toronto by:
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Supporting the Lead Agency in their system planning role
Informing a service area data strategy
Informing a service area performance management approach.
2. Guiding principles
Strategies and recommendations that the working group puts forward to EMYS will be founded in three
fundamental principles:
 Performance measurement tools and activities will be responsive to client preferences and
cultural norms.
 The result will benefit children, youth or families who need service or wish to access a mental
health service
 Data will be useful to frontline service providers and inform individual, program and
organizational continuous improvement practices
 Data will be focused on key decision that need to be made for system improvement and
management
In addition to these fundamental principles, the working group will strive to:
 Take an approach which is inclusive and considerate of Toronto’s diverse communities.
 Align its activities with those of the other working groups, service areas and provincial
performance measurement initiatives.
 Seek alignment with data collection practices across other children services such as Special
Needs, Autism and Youth Justice, and across sectors such as Health or Education.
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achieve integration, support service and system planning and continuity, reduce duplication and
support sustainability
3. Objectives
The recommendations on a performance management approach this workgroup provides will help
EMYS answer, from the perspective of the Toronto service area:
1. Who is being served and who needs what service at what time?
Are clients getting the right service at the right time?
2. Are those services effective?
3. Are agencies and the system performing well?
Objective 1:
Make recommendations to inform lead agency system planning: what information is needed to
understand service need, existing services, other systems, and mapping?
This requires linking to and pulling from
– Centralized access workgroup
– Serving mapping subgroup
– And will be supported by the Communication workgroup
Objective 2:
Make recommendations to inform a regional data strategy: what current data/client information
systems are in use, IT infrastructure, agency capacities, etc to move toward greater consistency and
data integrity across the service area?
This requires linking to and pulling from
– MCYS survey/gap-fit analysis
– Additional inventory survey
– MCYS Business Intelligence implementation
– Look at data accuracies/errors/ integration – how well are we doing regarding
operational standardization of the elements?
– How to share data - Electronic storage vs non electronic
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Objective 3:
Make recommendations to inform a performance management approach: how to meet MCYS
expectations regarding the 13 KPIs as the first priority and regional collective impact outcomes
and/or other regional KPIs as next priority?
This requires linking to and pulling from
– Ministry KPI
– Regional/lead agency performance expectations
– Core service providers priorities
Keep in mind the common identifier
How to use existing projects to help inform
How wedded are providers to their existing systems?
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4. Method
The k/i/d System Performance Management Working Group will meet monthly to plan for and work on
activities within the scope of its objectives. Members will volunteer to complete activities between
monthly meetings, as their schedule allows. Members will select tasks based on their areas of expertise
and experience. Sub-working groups will be established and meet in between larger group meeting to
facilitate and expedite the work. Content area experts will be consulted on an as-needed basis.
East Metro Youth Services will provide project support to the data group to enable note taking and
development, monitoring and updating of work achieved and to be done.
The group will be led by the Chair who will be responsible for scheduling the meetings and providing an
agenda prior to each meeting. If a project manager is not assigned to the group, duties will be allocated
to the Chair and the Chair may reallocate administrative duties to group members.
Ideally all decisions will be made on group consensus, but if a consensus cannot be reached a 2/3
majority is required for decision making. In the event that some decisions are deemed problematic and
concensus or majority is not achieved, the Chair will assume the responsibility for decision making in
consultation with the lead agency representative.
5. Membership
The membership will seek to represent and include the voices of Toronto’s diverse service network and
the client populations served.
The k/i/d System Performance Management Working Group is composed of 10-15 representatives of
core service and partner agencies in the Toronto service area. The committee may also include
representation from Children’s Mental Health Ontario, the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and
Youth Mental Health, and other provincial organizations with a systems perspective. The workgroup has
representation of senior management, management and staff who have appropriate skills and
knowledge in:
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IT (hardware, software, cloud based data management, database management)
Performance Measurement
Evaluation and Continuous Quality Improvement
Implementation and Change Management
Data Analysis
Ethics, Legislation and Privacy
At least one representative of the working group will liaise with other working groups to ensure
consistency, alignment and a shared purpose.
Members recognize that while they are employees of organizations they are also contributing to system
improvement. Conflicts of interest will be declared at each meeting and where required, in between
meetings.
5. Reporting
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All official communications will be distributed through the Chair, who will first approve these
communications. All members will be informed when communications are sent out and provided final
copies of the materials. Key to this work is clarity and consistency of messaging.
Terms of Reference Approval and Review
The Knowledge, Information and Data – System Performance Management Working Group Terms of
Reference will be reviewed on an annual basis, following initial approval.
These Terms of Reference should be subject to review if subsequent work is required after
recommendations on primary objectives are submitted and further work is required from the group.
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