.jpg;w=960)
THUNDER BAY – Thunder Bay Counselling and Children’s Centre Thunder Bay have announced that they have entered into a formal strategic alliance designed to enhance their capacity to serve children, youth, adults, and families in the District of Thunder Bay and area.
With increasingly complex community service needs, the alliance aims to increase efficiencies and maximize resources to deliver the best possible services to clients.
“It’s really an opportunity for both organizations to utilize the resources that they’ve got... in a really efficient and effective way. We’ve already been doing this on various projects throughout the last 15 to 20 years,” said Nancy Chamberlain, executive director of the Thunder Bay Counselling Centre.
“And so now it’s an opportunity to dig a little bit deeper, to look a little bit deeper and come out so that we have holistic care across the lifespan.”
The new alliance brings together decades of professional experience and clinical expertise to help support the unique health and well-being challenges facing people and communities and builds on an already established informal relationship between the two organizations.
One of their most successful past joint initiatives has been the walk-in counselling clinic, which is now in its fifteenth year of service.
As an alliance, the organizations offer a wide range of health, mental health, development, social, and support services to people throughout their lifespan.
The collaboration also aims to create new opportunities for sharing knowledge, best practices, and service resources.
The Organizations say that the strategic alliance is not a merger but instead leverages the unique strengths and assets of each organization to enhance their collective reach and impact.
“We spend a lot of time thinking about this, about what our strengths are, what are areas we could do better in, what our budgets are, what our human resource talent pool is. I mean our board really did a lot of work in this space and we had some people help us really think this through,” said Diane Walker, CEO, Children's Centre Thunder Bay
“And when we really looked at some of the strengths and some of the areas where we could grow, each organization brought unique things to the mix.”
As part of the alliance, both Thunder Bay Counselling and Children’s Centre Thunder Bay will keep their independence, while agreeing to a new level of governance and operational cooperation.
