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Dear Members
A key part of my work as President of our Association is making our profession, our contributions, and our value visible and clear to partners, stakeholders and government. I’m pleased to report significant success since I last reported to you.
As you will see, we’ve made significant inroads with universities, engaged with our regulatory college and advocated with both provincial and federal governments on your behalf.
Equally important is ensuring I deliver value to you as members. These past few months we have been focused on a topic that has concerned many of you – helping you successfully navigate the CRPO Quality Assurance process.
Quality Assurance – supporting our members
CRPO – Case Based Assessments are a cause of some anxiety for our members. In response to this, we initiated our prep sessions starting in April. Jane Alway and I began with the first cohort of members (those who had signed up in April). There were two such sessions in April and will be two more in October, coinciding with CRPO’s assessment schedule of May and November.
From the feedback we have received to date it has offered guidance, comfort and understanding to our members who are going through this assessment. I am pleased to note that we have had an overwhelming response to the offer of these prep sessions, and they were received well, and members reported feeling better prepared for their coming assessments.
CRPO engagement
We continue to work closely with our colleagues on the regulatory side. This has included an OAMHP response to CRPO’s requests for consultation as well as regular meetings between Deb Adams at CRPO, myself and Maryann. Our last meeting was in April, during which we discussed scope of practice issues, federal HST restrictions and the varying titles used in different provinces to describe the same act and provider.
The college remains helpful in clarifying definitions and answers our concerns around this topic. On May 2nd we attended a CRPO hosted meeting of Associations. If you are interested in hearing an update on the activities of the CRPO, a copy of the information can be found here.
Advocacy
While we continue to face an uphill battle advocating for our members, we persevere. A meeting with Michael Tibollo, Associate Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, was scheduled in conjunction with Kyle McIntyre (Deputy Health Minister) and staff on April 21, at which point our core issues and key priorities as an association were discussed as well as the need to add psychotherapists to the Ontario Public Service benefits plan (there are more than 60,000 members of the OPS across the province). It was a very fruitful meeting, and we are looking forward to further meetings in the near future.
I also continue to chair the Public Policy Committee, which has had very robust monthly meetings at which we have explored how best to clarify who we are and how to communicate this in our advocacy work.
Our advocacy work also included responses to both the federal and provincial budgets. While OAMHP held a positive stance about increased funding for mental health and addictions from both orders of government, we publicly shared specific criticisms. OAMHP called out the federal government for failing to remove HST from psychotherapy while at the same time attempting to position itself as investing in mental health.
Similarly, OAMHP made the same critique of the provincial government and pointed out that the increased funding for mental health was to flow only to already funded organizations and thus did not take advantage of Ontario’s psychotherapists who work outside of these models and whose help is desperately needed to address Canada’s mental health crisis.
In essence, our stance has stiffened: we have characterized HST as a “punitive tax” and we have demanded that both orders of government take action to deliver more than platitudes when it comes to mental health. Here's the letter sent to the government in response to the 2023 Budget.
In closing…
As a personal reflection, we can see that our health care system continues to be severely challenged as it not only recovers from the pandemic but also transforms itself. Recent funding announcements from both federal and provincial government are welcome but, as always, the devil is in the (implementation) details. Rest assured; we are taking steps to ensure we take our rightful place at policy tables where we can advocate for our members.
This is a long game and patience is required. As James Clear (author of Atomic Habits, a must-read) states, persistence is the most useful form of patience, which he defines as: “keeping your head down and continuing to work when things take longer than you expect.” I can assure you that, your Board has its collective head down and is working hard on your behalf.
Most sincerely,
Liana Palmerio-McIvor, RP, (Cert-S) OAMHP
President, OAMHP
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