Hello fellow members, 

I’m sure you’re demonstrating grace under pressure as you tackle the important mental health work that’s demanded of us, especially as we enter the winter months. As the days grow shorter, our work hours grow longer and the pressures of the holiday season grow, it’s important to keep the importance of self-care top of mind. Ensuring our own wellbeing is a responsibility to our profession and ourselves. I hope you all have a network of peers, a supervisor, a colleague or friends and family to support you as you perform important work to help others maintain their mental health.

Building Capacity

I had the privilege to attend a board governance workshop with Capacity Canada last week. Capacity Canada is a Waterloo-based non-profit that helps other non-profits enhance their effectiveness.

There were many highlights from this three-day experience, namely, how to lead a board successfully, how to connect and work successfully with your administration (which is amazing to start with) and how together our board can take equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging to the next level. This will help us as we, an association, continue to examine our strategic plan, which we put in place last year.

Creating Connections

Our December board meeting highlighted the importance of reaching out to many stakeholders. In the new year we will begin reaching out to educational institutions, which will enable us to connect with new graduates. As a board, we also continue to respond to public and media queries about matters important to the mental health landscape. 

As many of you will know, the Ontario NDP (the Official Opposition in the legislature) tabled a bill earlier this year to eliminate HST on psychotherapy services and have recently issued a position statement. We continue to advocate for this and are engaging with Lisa Gretsky, Ontario NDP Critic for Mental Health and Addictions, to maintain momentum on this important issue. I expect to meet with Ms. Gretsky in the new year.

CRPO Engagement

I took the leap and engaged in the new Quality Assurance “pilot” assessment with CRPO, which all college registrants will need to complete, starting in the spring of next year with re-assessments every five years.

I had the opportunity to give some feedback at our monthly meeting with the Registrar and to the quality assurance advisors who drafted this new process for RP members. I am confident they will make some adjustments to the process to make it a fair assessment. It’s my hope that it will be an opportunity for you to reflect on your practice, especially through the lens of equity. I will admit that, despite almost three decades of practice, I found the assessment very rigorous and at times challenging. To support our members we will be looking into some preparation aids to help with QA prep anxiety in the new year.

2023 Membership Renewal

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to renew their membership for the 2023 year! We have received renewals for almost half of our membership! If you have yet to renew, please do so by December 31st. If you have any questions or need support with your renewal, please reach out to membership@oamhp.ca and OAMHP staff would be happy to help you!

Staying Connected

We are here to support you and provide you with tools that enhance your practice as well as connect to peers and others. If you have any suggestions on how we could do this differently, please connect with me. I look forward to engaging with the membership where I can. Please drop me a line at president@oamhp.ca.

Check Out The Pulse

In closing, I would like to continue to encourage all our members to read the weekly Pulse that summarizes and shares key updates on initiatives, courses, workshops, and events that we offer our membership.

Happy holidays! 

Most sincerely,

Liana Palmerio-McIvor 

RP, (Cert-S) OAMHP President