Annual Report 2026

Adapting for Impact

Lessons Learned from Transforming Mental Health and Substance Use Health Systems Across Diverse Contexts

April 2025 – March 2026

A Message from our Leadership

Louise Bradley Board Chair

AnnMarie Churchill President and Lead Executive Officer

Leading Transformation

Dear partners, colleagues, and community members,

Mental health and substance use health systems continue to face growing and increasingly complex demands. Across jurisdictions, leaders are navigating pressures on access, workforce capacity, sustainability, and equity—while communities rightly expect care that is easier to access, more responsive to their needs, and better connected.

Meeting these challenges requires us to continually rethink how systems are designed and adapt our approaches to the needs and realities of the communities they serve.

Over the past year, we partnered with organizations nationally and internationally to advance system transformation across diverse settings. While every local context is distinct, five fundamental lessons emerged that drive impactful and sustainable transformation:

Build on Existing Assets: Maximized impact begins by understanding and redesigning established infrastructure to create responsive, flexible pathways that expand access to care.
Co-Design a Shared Vision: Meaningful progress relies on uniting leaders, service providers, and people with lived experience to align priorities and solve system challenges together.
Adapt to Local Realities: Core frameworks generate the strongest outcomes when tailored directly to regional priorities and cultural contexts.
Enable Implementation Readiness: Long-term practice change requires dedicated leadership, targeted workforce development, and strong strategic partnerships.
Commit to Continuous Learning: Iterative reflection and feedback loops ensure systems remain agile and capable of evolving with community needs.

The initiatives featured in this report demonstrate these principles in practice with substantial impacts—reducing barriers to care, streamlining care pathways, and building sustainable workforce capacity.

We extend our deep gratitude to our partners in Canada and around the world for their vision and collaboration. As we look ahead, we remain committed to strengthening mental health systems and communities for more accessible, connected, responsive, and sustainable approaches—advancing our shared vision of Wellbeing Everywhere.

Sincerely,

Louise Bradley, Board Chair

AnnMarie Churchill, President and Lead Executive Officer

Our Foundation

Our Vision

Wellbeing Everywhere

Our Mission

To lead a global transformation of mental health and substance use health care systems where mental health is universally accepted as part of health and wellbeing, and everyone has open access to stigma free, culturally appropriate resources, tools and supports that elevate their quality of life.

Our Values

Mission First

Driving actions that align with a vision of wellbeing everywhere.

Better Together

Collaborating with you to harness our collective strengths and diverse perspectives for meaningful outcomes.

Context Matters

Ensuring our solutions are informed by the wider landscape of mental health and substance use health in our communities.

Impact at a Glance

This year, Stepped Care Solutions worked alongside partners across Canada and internationally to adapt the SC2.0 model to their local contexts while strengthening implementation, building capacity, and supporting system change.

From national health systems to community organizations, universities, and population-specific initiatives, our work continued to demonstrate that transformation doesn't look the same everywhere. The following highlights provide a snapshot of our collective reach and the progress we made toward our vision of Wellbeing Everywhere.

100% of clients agreed working with SCS helped achieve their goals

21 Organizations

100% of clients were satisfied with SCS overall and would recommend us to others

Where We Worked

We partnered with organizations and systems across Canada and internationally, providing consultation, strategy development, implementation support, training, and corporate wellbeing initiatives to advance more accessible, equitable, and sustainable mental health and substance use health systems.

Map showing where SCS worked: Canada, United States, Mexico, Wales, Scotland and Chile.

6 Countries Canada, United States, Wales, Chile, Mexico, Scotland

7 Canadian provinces and territories

Partners spanning governments, health systems, community organizations, universities, and population-specific initiatives.

Training and Capacity Building

We delivered learning and training to build knowledge, skills, and confidence in SC2.0, One-at-a-Time (OAAT) counselling, and implementation science.

815

total course completions

OAAT Counselling, Stepped Care 2.0®, and Implementation Science

88%

overall participant satisfaction

95%

measured knowledge growth

Our approach

Across our work, themes included

More flexible, person-centric models

Adapting models, pathways and approaches to local needs and preferences.

Stronger coordination and alignment

Connecting leaders, providers, communities, and people with lived and living experience around shared priorities.

Greater implementation readiness

Building the governance, structures and processes, plans, and capacity needed to move from vision to impact.

Clearer pathways for change

Turning identified needs and priorities into practical recommendations, actionable strategies, and plans.

Better understanding of systems

Mapping services, strengths, gaps, and opportunities to inform system design and improvement.

Stronger foundations for continuous improvement

Building evaluation, data, and learning into implementation from the outset.

Our sector presence

Learning and sharing lessons across the sector

95+

Community of Practice Attendees

Across 3 SCS-led events for reciprocal learning across diverse implementation contexts.

Conferences and Sector Events

Presenting implementation and system design insights across Canada, the US, Singapore, and the UK.

Knowledge Sharing Resources

7 podcasts, 8 blogs, 2 newsletters, 1 news release, 2 publications (in press), and 25 implementation resources shared across the sector.

Wellbeing Everywhere

Stories of Impact

Real change, shaped together

Meaningful system transformation takes shape differently in every community, organization, and health system. At Stepped Care Solutions, our work is grounded in partnership, working alongside people and organizations to understand their context, build on existing strengths, and adapt approaches to support their goals. The stories that follow highlight some of these partnerships—and what we're learning along the way.

International

NHS Wales: Shaping a National Vision for Mental Health System Transformation

NHS Wales is advancing a national transformation of mental health services, with a focus on open access and stepped care. Working alongside national and local partners, SCS supported a shared understanding of SC2.0, linked governance, implementation tools, and capacity building across all seven Health Boards.

Read the story

NHS Tayside (Scotland): Turning Vision into Practice

NHS Tayside is translating a new Adult Model of Care into practical, person-centred service change. SCS worked with clinical and operational leaders to adapt SC2.0 principles, assess readiness, strengthen workforce understanding, and co-develop an implementation roadmap and evaluation framework for the next phase of transformation.

Read the story

UC Berkeley Student Mental Health and California Youth Behavioral Health: Advancing SC2.0 and Expanding Access Through Community Partnerships

Work with UC Berkeley Student Mental Health and California community partners is strengthening leadership, data-informed decision-making, and readiness for broader SC2.0 implementation. The partnership is helping teams translate shared values into practical action while preparing for expanded capacity building and future scaling across community settings.

Read the story

National

Co-designing a digitally-enabled continuum of care for Veterans and their families

Co-designing a digitally-enabled Continuum of Care to support Veterans and their Families

With funding from Veterans Affairs Canada, SCS partnered with the Atlas Institute and McMaster University to co-design recommendations for a more connected, digitally enabled continuum of care. Veterans, family members, service providers, researchers, and system leaders helped identify opportunities to strengthen navigation, continuity, peer support, and access.

Read the story

Canadian Forces Health Services: Preparing for Stepped-Based Care Implementation

Canadian Forces Health Services is modernizing mental health care to better connect services and help members access the right support at the right time. SCS supported the early stages of stepped-based care implementation, with a focus on implementation readiness and evaluation planning tailored to the needs of the military health system.

Read the story

Community Mental Health

CMHA Niagara: Creating the Conditions for Sustainable Change

CMHA Niagara is continuing to implement SC2.0 to improve access, strengthen workforce capacity, and support continuous quality improvement. SCS worked alongside the organization on co-design, communication and system planning, helping build shared understanding, strengthen implementation readiness, and develop a roadmap for the next phase of change.

Read the story

Elgin Ontario Health Team: Connecting Care Around Community Needs

Elgin Ontario Health Team is strengthening how people connect with mental health and substance use health supports across the region. Building on earlier co-design work, SCS is supporting the move into implementation through capacity building with staff and community partners and practical planning grounded in local needs.

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Huddle Broadway: Evolving Integrated Youth Services

Huddle Broadway, led by CMHA Manitoba, is evolving its integrated youth services model to maintain timely, person-centred support for young people. SCS worked with staff and partners to build shared understanding of SC2.0, identify improvement priorities, and translate them into practical recommendations and an implementation roadmap.

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BridgePoint Centre for Eating Disorder Recovery: Connecting Saskatchewan's Continuum of Care

BridgePoint and SCS brought together people with lived and living experience, caregivers, service providers, and system leaders to better understand Saskatchewan's eating disorder continuum of care. The work identified gaps and opportunities for earlier support, stronger care transitions, provider capacity building, and a clearer roadmap for collaboration across the province.

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Workforce and Leadership Development

Communities of Practice

SCS Communities of Practice bring together leaders, practitioners, researchers, and implementation partners to learn across systems and settings. The Winter 2026 series explored system transformation, One-at-a-Time approaches, and workforce readiness, creating space to share practical experience and consider how emerging learning can be adapted to local contexts.

Read the story

What's Next

Join us in reimagining wellbeing

There are many ways to work, learn, and connect with us: Partner with us to advance system transformation and workplace wellbeing. Explore training opportunities through facilitator-led workshops and self-paced eLearning. Or learn with us through events, podcasts, insights, and resources.

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