National Child and Youth Mental Health Day is marked in Canada this week, on May 7.

The event was started in 2007 by the Vancouver-based Institute of Families for Child & Youth Mental Health, intending to create awareness of the thousands of children, youth, and families needing mental health support and care across Canada.

It is especially important to reach and support children and families who are coping with multiple adversities. Yet many of these families are defined by researchers and providers as “hard-to-reach” and therefore are underserved.

The British Columbia Healthy Connections Project (BCHCP), a randomized controlled trial conducted by the Children’s Health Policy Centre, involved sustained engagement with nearly 1,500 children and mothers for the two-and-a-half years.

The lessons about engagement learned from this study can be seen here.