Backgrounder - Announcement of settlement funding for Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto

The Government of Canada, through Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), is committing $9.2 million for an immigrant support network at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. It will help improve access to health care services for immigrant newcomers and assist the staff at the hospital to better meet the needs of their patients.

One component of the immigrant support network will be the translation of 45 core patient health education articles into the eight languages most commonly used by newcomers at the hospital: Chinese, French, Tamil, Spanish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Vietnamese and Arabic. These documents will be published online through SickKids.ca and AboutKidsHealth.ca. Audio files of 300 patient health education articles will also be recorded in the five most commonly required languages and will be available online at AboutKidsHealth.ca.

A second component of the network consists of cultural awareness education for health-care professionals. It includes a comprehensive needs assessment to determine the nature and frequency of issues faced by immigrant children who are cared for at the hospital and their families. It will help in the adaptation and delivery of training to hospital staff and make best practices available to other hospitals across Ontario.

Overall, the goals of the immigrant support network are to:

• Improve access to appropriate health-care services for immigrant newcomers;
• Increase capacity of staff to meet the needs of immigrant newcomers;
• Enhance inter-professional teams to collaboratively care for newcomers to Canada;
• Help with recruitment and retention of health human resources and facilitating staff engagement;
• Develop cultural knowledge and awareness amongst staff;
• Assist staff with cultural assessment;
• Take into account the differences in values and beliefs among cultures; and
• Make best practices available to other hospitals across Ontario.

Settlement services are an essential part of the federal government’s immigration program. Ontario has the largest immigrant population in the country. This funding is being provided under the Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement (COIA). Under COIA, CIC works with the province and immigrant-serving agencies to make a real difference in the lives of immigrants.