Funded by the Shoppers Foundation for Women’s Health, The Healthy Directions program had its beginnings at IWSO in November 2024, and has since continued to evolve, flourish, and find innovative and resourceful ways to increase access to mental health and substance use health services and supports for immigrant and racialized women.

Healthy Directions focusses on increasing access through a tripartite approach, namely, through mental health needs assessments and action planning, peer support groups, and interactive workshop series’ that focus on understanding mental health and developing healthy coping techniques. In keeping with IWSO’s overall Mission, Vision, and Mandate, Healthy Directions works from an intersectional, feminist, and strengths-based approach which centers the client as the expert in her own life and experiences. Using this client-centered model, the program focusses on connecting women to resources, services, and supports that are both trauma-informed and accessible in terms of cultural responsiveness, language, and cost (if any). Healthy Directions is unique as it is housed within IWSO’s crisis department and is designed to offer support to women who are experiencing, or have experienced gender-based violence, however, the program also has capacity to offer the same service and support to clients from the settlement department thereby extending its reach and ability to increase awareness and access to mental health and wellness resources for immigrant and racialized women. 

Since beginning to offer direct client service in January 2025, the Healthy Directions program has connected with over 67 women to facilitate mental health needs assessments and action planning. After meeting one-on-one with a client to gain an understanding of the specific challenges she is facing and issues she is looking to address, the client is then connected to the services and supports in the community that are most relevant for her individual needs. Each client is provided with a tailored mental health action plan outlining all of the resources discussed during the needs assessment and detailing how to access each service directly. Clients are supported during needs assessment meetings with language interpretation services when required as well as having access to follow-up appointments to review action plans, and to be supported to register for services and programming. Through offering one-on-one mental health needs assessment and personalized action planning, the Healthy Directions program contributes toward women’s knowledge and understanding of mental health, as well as women’s knowledge of services available in the City of Ottawa specific to their own individual needs.

Healthy Directions likewise focusses on encouraging development of resiliency among immigrant and racialized women as well as a sense of independence, self-confidence, and positive self-esteem. To achieve this goal, the program runs a weekly drop-in peer support group called Sisterhood Circle which has welcomed over 100 women since its inception. Sisterhood Circle focusses on developing self-confidence, self-esteem, and increasing social connection. The sessions have featured group discussions, art therapy and painting, yoga, and mindfulness walks, in addition to resulting in friendships that extend beyond the support group meetings. Likewise, Healthy Directions increases women’s knowledge and awareness of mental health through the facilitation of the Beyond Anxiety interactive workshop series. Developed in-house, the workshop series focusses on understanding mental health and anxiety, identifying triggers and symptoms of stress and anxiety, developing healthy coping mechanisms, and practicing grounding techniques. Since its first cohort, Beyond Anxiety has run two sessions of the series and has welcomed over 80 women who have benefitted from the material and tangible grounding and resiliency skills that they emerge equipped with from the 5-week session.

Finally, with the support and collaboration of other IWSO programs and staff, the Healthy Directions program successfully hosted a Women’s Health and Wellness Fair in June welcoming over 55 women who had access to information and resources from 12 community service providers and organizations. The event offered service providers a unique networking opportunity as well as providing event attendees with information and resources related to women’s health and wellness, diabetes and cancer screening, dental care, mental health and substance use health, sexual and reproductive health, family planning, 2SLGBTQIA+ health, women’s safety, sexual assault support, gender-based violence, and more. Information available at the health fair was unique and specific to IWSO clientele as it focused on resources and services specific to immigrant and newcomer women and presented supports with a cultural lens applied.  The success of the event was further enhanced by the participation of a facepainting artist, henna artists Blue Lotus Henna and Henna Haven, and by Shopper’s Drug Mart Bank & Gladstone location’s sponsorship of the event through their generous contribution of women’s wellness items included in gift bags that were distributed to each attendee as well as 3 gift cards worth $100 each that were raffled off as door prizes to three lucky winners.

Since its launch in November 2024, Healthy Directions has been making a significant impact in the community and in the lives of immigrant and racialized women. The program has connected with over 370 women since January to increase knowledge and access to mental health and substance use health services and supports, as well as enhancing immigrant and racialized women’s resiliency, social connections, self-esteem, self-confidence, and independence through interactive workshops and peer-support programming. The Healthy Directions program has seen great success in its first 8 months and looks forward to being able to continue to offer unique and innovative programming and resources to survivors of gender-based violence, immigrant and racialized women, for the foreseeable future.