I'll get going, because I can talk on and on.
These are probably some really important points, but I think strengths based is a really important piece. When we're talking about cultures and about knowledge, we're talking about different systems of knowledge. How do we draw from those systems, in partnerships, in collaborations, to realize the kinds of things we need to do to move forward together to address a lot of these social challenges that we're facing?
The literature also talks about protective factors, ensuring individual identity and personal skills, engagement of youth in the strategies that are being developed for them or with them—it should be with them—and really thinking about intersectoral collaborations, so that it doesn't just sit in health or in education, that there are multiple players here. There needs to be intersectoral solutions.
I'm going to skip some, because I probably have three minutes left now.
I'm going to talk about my last slide. I have a number of others in here. One I will say is on some of the protective factors. I think Rod and Mike mentioned about the seminal work of Chandler and Lalonde. They looked at communities that were more self-determining, and that indeed those communities had insignificant, if any, rates of youth suicide. That's a seminal piece of work in this country, in my opinion, and there are many others.
I want to go right to my last slide. I wish you could see it. It's a graphic. You'll maybe be able to see it in your mind. In the centre, there are nested circles. In the centre, we have “Restoring and Revitalizing Individuals and Families”, so that there's the healing. All of the programs we heard about are absolutely essential to the healing of individuals and families. Those constitute the community.
Sitting within that, though.... That circle is nested within systems and structures. Those systems and structures need to be enabling those direct services to individuals and families. They need to be enabling those to happen. If we have a lack of funding, or we have a policy that won't allow certain things, then we're not enabling those good practices that the community will develop. I think that's really important.
I see those as the enablers of all of this. Being in a lot of these discussions, I don't hear us talk about that. It's hard. It's not easy to make those changes. However, if we're going to see these practices at the community level—and we've heard about sustainability and all of that—we need to be looking at and moving simultaneously, at multiple levels, to ensure that what's happening at that one-on-one level will be successful.
I'm going to stop there. I made it through two slides.
Thank you very much.