Research & Resources
Research at Vanier focuses on children with special needs and
their families, in particular how mental health problems develop
and how to treat them.
Activities include a full range of projects, from working with
university professors conducting basic science or applied research,
to formal evaluations of our own programs. We are continuously
learning about what is working with children and families and using
that knowledge to improve our services. We often work with other
children's mental health centres and with researchers at
universities.
Current research projects
Vanier is currently involved in large projects with
university-based researchers and several other children's mental
health centres:
Examining Patterns of Service Utilization within Children's
Mental Health Agencies -- Professor Graham Reid at The
University of Western Ontario leads this project which looks at how
five different groups of children and families use services. For
example, some families need only a few visits while others need a
lot of visits over a long time.
Long-term Community Adaptation of Children and Families
Participating in Residential and Intensive Family Service
Children's Mental Health Programs -- Professor Gary
Cameron at the University of Guelph leads this project which aims
to describe long-term outcomes from intensive children's mental
health services.
Past research & resources
Comprehensive Evaluation of the Focused Family Therapy
Program at Vanier - project looked at a creative
initiative where clients needing family therapy are served by a
team of senior clinicians, post-graduate externs, and
students.*
Click here to download the PDF
Evaluation of the Early Years Program -- The Early
Years Team (EYT) serves clients age 0-6 through a variety of
programs, including outpatient counseling, in-home support, and day
treatment. This project developed an infrastructure for ongoing
evaluation that is contributing to data-driven decisions.*
Click
here to download the PDF
Monitoring of Reducing Restraints Initiatives in Intensive
Services - This project documents the steps that Vanier
has taken to become a leader in reducing the use of physical
interventions to manage dangerous behaviour.*
Click
here to download the PDF
Quality of Service Reports - Vanier conducts
ongoing evaluations of all services.
Click here to download the 2009 Report
Click here to download the 2008 Report (PDF)
Click here
to download the 2006 Report (PDF)
Supervised Water-Based Activities Policy -- In 2005,
Vanier organized a group of 17 local child and youth service
providers to come together to assess existing water-based
activities policies and to identify best practices for the
sector.
Click here to
download the PDF
Technical Report on Facial Expression Analysis in
Schizophrenia -- Vanier's Coordinator of Research and
Evaluation, Jeff Carter, Ph.D., C.Psych., completed his doctoral
research on how people who have schizophrenia see other peoples
facial expressions. Find the full article Cognitive processing of
facial affect: Connectionist model of deviations in schizophrenia.
In the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 116, 290 305. Carter, J.R.
& Neufeld, R.W.J. (2007).
Click here to
download the Technical Note (PDF)
*Vanier received Program Evaluation Grants from the Provincial
Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health at
Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
