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About the Leadership Gathering

Our Leadership Gathering allows industry leaders to engage in discussions around how the coordination of services to vulnerable populations can be improved

Connective is delighted to announce that the inaugural Leadership Gathering took place on October 27-28, 2022. The event was designed as a multi-sectoral dialogue aimed to improve the coordination and outcomes of complex service delivery to vulnerable populations and built upon critical work generated from eight expert panels over the past two years.

 

Our Leadership Gathering brought together invited representatives of non-profit service agencies, social sector Ministries, health authorities, Indigenous and other community organizations and voices of lived experience to engage in critical discussions around how the coordination of services to vulnerable populations can be improved to create better outcomes.

Providing services and supports to British Columbia’s most vulnerable people is highly complex. It is a significant focus of resources for government and for many non-profit service agencies. Client populations overlap the mandates of many agencies and Ministries, as risk or vulnerability in one area is a strong predictor for risk or vulnerability in other areas.

 

Many individuals may also have experienced significant trauma and/or aversive experiences with institutions, requiring frontline workers and agencies to maintain high levels of patience, care, and empathy in responding to their clients’ often complex needs. In the service delivery setting there are many different locations and types of authority, competence, and responsibility. Various types of accountability are required: to clients directly, to taxpayers and donors, across Ministries, and amongst and between agencies working in partnership.

 

Within this complex environment, diversity in service delivery arrangements is the norm. There are many good reasons for this and there can be no “one size fits all.” Crucially, this diversity means it can be difficult to coordinate responses more broadly, even in circumstances when there is general agreement that doing so would be beneficial. There may be great benefit to finding a mechanism for the different stakeholders in the sector to meet regularly, on an equal footing, for candid, constructive dialogue on how best to serve BC’s most vulnerable populations, families, and individual citizens.

 

Connective’s Leadership Gathering is an event series that engages decision-makers, thought leaders and service providers across the health, justice, social and non-profit sectors in British Columbia on key policy issues directly impacting operational services to vulnerable populations. To learn more about the sessions that have taken place to date, visit the events page of our website, linked here.