Top 5 Sherbourne Stories of 2023
It’s been another big year for Sherbourne Health. 2023 saw a growth in services, programming and a continued return to in-person services as we learn to live with COVID-19. While it was hard to narrow down our favourite moments and biggest accomplishments of 2023, here’s a few of the big stories that leave us looking back fondly on the year that was and looking forward to 2024.
Sherbourne Health receives Exemplary Standing from Accreditation Canada
In late June 2023, Sherbourne Health participated in an accreditation site visit with Accreditation Canada. Health care accreditation through the Qmentum program is an ongoing process of assessing health care and social services organizations against standards of excellence to identify what is being done well and what needs to be improved.
As a result of extensive preparation and the perseverance of our outstanding teams, we are proud to announce that we completed the process with a score of 98% and Exemplary Standing. This means that Sherbourne Health has attained the highest level of performance, achieving excellence in meeting the requirements of the accreditation program.
In the full report, our site surveyors praised our engaged board, strong leadership, sound fiscal management and our commitment to living our values, vision and mission as being strong contributors to our outstanding result.
One Last Bowlathon
On Saturday, October 21, families, friends, and colleagues packed the lanes for a beloved annual tradition from Supporting Our Youth (SOY), one final time.
The SOY Ultimate Bowlathon brought together more than 80 attendees to The Ballroom for an exciting afternoon of bowling, fabulous prizes, and fun, as well as celebrating precious memories and the legacy of 2SLGBTQ community excellence. Thanks to their outstanding efforts, as well as tremendous contributions from sponsors and over 400 supporters, this year’s SOY Ultimate Bowlathon exceeded its original goal by 120% and raised over $48,000 for vital youth programming!
We are working to plan our next fundraising activities for SOY, so stay tuned for something new for 2024!
Helping people and improving health outcomes
Across Ontario, more than 2.3 million people do not have a family doctor, and in Toronto, that number hovers at over 400,000 people who are unattached to care. Without a family doctor, people frequently turn to emergency departments and walk-in clinics where they are unlikely to have continuity of care. People without a family physician are also more likely to wait longer to address health challenges, which can increase the complexity of their condition as well as the system costs to treat them.
Thanks to an increased recruitment of family physicians as well as nurse practitioners and nurses working to the full scope of their practice, Sherbourne Health was able to bring in more than 200 new patients into our Family Health Team in 2023, helping to alleviate pressures across the healthcare system.
Food for Good programming continues to grow
2023 marked a big year of progress for Food For Good programming. After launching our Food For Good Market Greens weekly produce market at The Corner in 2022, Food For Good continues to grow. In April of this year, Sherbourne held a fundraiser to help us reach a big goal – the creation of a social enterprise café that will serve our staff, community and clients affordable and healthy food while offering employment training. As part of this campaign we were able to run a series of print ads in the Toronto Star featuring a number of renowned local chefs that was very well received. We are grateful to all of our supporters, and construction is well underway. We are looking forward to opening the Food For Good Café in 2024.
Rainbow Health Ontario moves the needle on 2SLGBTQ health care
Rainbow Health Ontario is a provincial program of Sherbourne Health that offers training for healthcare providers across the province to feel more clinically and culturally competent in caring for their 2SLGBTQ service users.
In 2020, RHO launched 2SLGBTQ Foundations, an online, self-directed course that lays a groundwork for health care providers to understand gender and sexuality and how to provide the best care for 2SLGBTQ identified patients and clients. In 2023, RHO hit an impressive milestone of 10,000 learners completing 2SLGBTQ Foundations. This year we’ve also had over 1,400 learners complete online, self-directed courses as well as live courses with a facilitator.
This year also saw the launch of a very impressive four new courses:
- Fondements 2SLGBTQ (RHO’s flagship 2SLGBTQ Foundations course delivered in French)
- 2SLGBTQ Older Adults and Inclusive Care
- 2SLGBTQ Emotional and Mental Health
- 2SLGBTQ Trauma Informed Care