A new multi-year partnership with McGill University’s Centre for Research on Children and Families (CRCF) will help Ometz find meaningful ways to capture and report on the impact of our services on the lives of our clients.

McGill’s CRCF is home to cutting-edge research on effective programs and policies for vulnerable children and youth and their families, and often partners with various child and youth health and social service agencies in Montreal and across Quebec. Thanks to the generous support of the Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal, this latest collaboration will help Ometz develop the best tools to measure service impact for families with school-aged children.

“Responding optimally to the needs of children and youth requires well-thought out programming that meets evidence-based standards of care,” says Delphine Collin-Vézina, Director of the Centre for Research on Children and Families. “The partnership is an opportunity to expand on the careful provision and monitoring of front-line services that Ometz provides to children and youth in need.”

A McGill graduate student has begun conducting an in-depth review of case files to identify evaluation methods already used in client records, and to recommend steps to move forward to measure Ometz client outcomes. They are also assisting in the development of a matrix applicable to all children and youth receiving services at Ometz, and assessing wellbeing across four main areas: education and cognitive control, physical and mental health, social and emotional development, and the family system.

This information will help answer the following questions: who are the clients best helped by Ometz services? What are the domains of well-being most positively impacted by the services? Are there some clients who do not seem to benefit as much from the programs? What can be done to make sure all clients improve their wellbeing across all domains?

“This is an exciting opportunity for Ometz to qualify the excellent work that we do here,” says Monique Lapointe of Ometz, who has been working closely with the McGill team. “Our partnership with McGill will help us to better tell our amazing stories, and understand the impact of our work.”