New guidance on working with goals in youth mental health, with IWK Healthcare
In Spring 2026 we completed work on a project focused on developing practice principles for working with goals in youth mental health services, funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research and led Lori Wozney - Sun Life Chair Youth Mental Health, Assistant Professor Psychiatry; IWK Health; 4link.
The project started with a question that felt both simple and surprisingly unresolved: we often ask young people about goals in therapy, but are we actually doing it well?
“Done well, goal work can be one of the clearest ways we show young people that their voice matters, their context matters, and their hopes for change belong at the centre of care.”
In mental health services, goals work is commonplace internationally. It is demonstrated in assessments, care plans, reviews, and progress and outcome conversations. But in practice, it can easily become routine, rushed or shaped more by paperwork than by the young person’s voice. That was the starting point for our project.
By goals work, we mean the conversations, decisions and reviews centred on objectives through which young people, families, caregivers or support persons, and clinicians identify what change would be meaningful and how therapy might support it. We wanted to develop guidance to help clinicians make goal conversations more meaningful, more equitable, and more connected to formulation and treatment planning.
This blog provides insight into how this guidance was developed.
You can also access our infographic here.
