Walking the talk: A toolkit for engaging youth in mental health

Tools and templates, System planning, Youth engagement

Published: June 11, 2025

This toolkit was originally designed to live on an interactive web-based platform. Since its development in 2016, the toolkit was regularly updated by youth advisors from the Knowledge Institute to expand the original information and provide examples of youth engagement happening in the child and youth mental health sector.

In 2023, the Knowledge Institute moved the toolkit from its online site and reformatted it as a static resource. With this move, existing content from the toolkit’s website — up until its last update in 2019 — was copied into this document. Some decisions were made to remove content that was better viewed in the previous format, including links to external webpages and older stories featuring examples of youth engagement.

Although there is newer literature and language to describe youth engagement, no substantive changes were made to the content of the toolkit when it was reformatted and rebranded in 2023. We believe this toolkit is a valuable resource that maintains relevance to building youth engagement strategies and helps show the evolution of youth engagement.