ORAL PRESENTATION

A. Van Barneveld, C. Cheng, D. Eddington, C. Lem, H. Zachozy

Background: The NorthBEAT Project (2012-15) was an exploratory research project which identified barriers that young people and their families in Northern Ontario faced in receiving appropriate early psychosis intervention (EPI). Barriers included an isolating and disconnected system of care and a lack of knowledge about psychosis and appropriate intervention across that system of care.

In 2017, the NorthBEAT team received funding to establish a strategic collaborative to help address these barriers in Northwestern Ontario. The Collaborative has over 30 signed organizations spanning health services, child and youth programs, first responders, community and social services, and education sectors.

Methods: The Collaborative’s activities include the adaptation of existing face-to-face workshops (Psychosis 101) into modular eLearning in order to better serve a geographically distributed stakeholders across Northwestern Ontario. A key activity has been the development of eLearning modules for service providers that will improve their capacity to identify early psychosis, navigate services, and appropriately intervene. This project started with a needs-assessment and pilot, and the lessons learned from that phase were then used to inform the design and development of additional self-paced eLearning modules.

Discussion: This presentation will describe the experiences of the eLearning participants with a focus on their perceptions of changes in their capacity, confidence, workplace behaviours, and value of the learning experience to their organization. Next steps will also be discussed.