As Canada’s largest rehabilitation hospital for children and youth with disabilities, Holland Bloorview will be joining the millions of people living with a disability to celebrate National AccessAbility Week (NAAW), from May 28 to June 3, 2023.
NAAW is celebrated every year during the last week of May, to recognise the valuable contributions and leadership of people with disabilities, to highlight the work of people, organizations and communities that are removing barriers and to reflect on ongoing efforts to become a better, more accessible, inclusive Canada.
Holland Bloorview is committed to supporting the unique social needs of each family we serve while building an inclusive, diverse, equitable, accessible and anti-racist (IDEAA) environment that treats all individuals with respect and fairness. Our IDEAA office is dedicated to prioritizing these five areas of focus:
- Inclusion: feeling or experience of being valued
- Diversity: presence of difference(s) in a setting that make a given person or community unique
- Equity: an approach, process or outcome with the intention of being responsive to a community or individual’s unique needs
- Accessibility: an experience or design feature
- Anti-racism: challenging policies and practices which mirror and reinforce beliefs, attitudes, prejudice, stereotyping
On June 17, 2021, the Rick Hansen Foundation conducted an accessibility audit on Holland Bloorview, examining the hospital’s infrastructure from the parking lot to the workspaces and pool change rooms. With an accessibility rating of 82 per cent, the audit awarded Holland Bloorview with a gold certification. Holland Bloorview is the only hospital in Canada that has met the Rick Hansen Foundation’s highest standards of accessibility excellence.
As an institution responsible for the care and treatment of vulnerable peoples with disabilities, Holland Bloorview is proud of this achievement. The hospital’s certification is valid until the year 2026 providing ample opportunity to continue improving our infrastructure and systems to further benefit employees, clients and their families with disabilities.
A few examples of Holland Bloorview’s support for families, clients and staff:
- Project SEARCH: Holland Bloorview is a proud partner of this global transition-to-work program for youth with developmental disabilities in their final year of high school. Participating students complete co-op placements at the hospital, building social and professional skills and learning about workplace culture.
- Accessible MRI Suite: Holland Bloorview is the proud owner of Canada’s first child-friendly and fully accessible research MRI suite. The technology delivers an experience that is simultaneously immersive and calming for patients. Families will have the ability to view their children during the scan, and the children themselves can change the lighting and visuals within the machine.
- Accessible playground: In fall 2021, Holland Bloorview debuted its state-of-the-art, accessible playground for students and young clients. The playground’s universal design allows accessible functionality to be seamlessly blended into the equipment.
- HAPPY Project with Dr. Sally Lindsay: Developed by Holland Bloorview’s TRAIL (Transitions and Inclusive Environments) lab, HAPPY (Healthy and Productive Paid work for Youth with disabilities) helps enhance inclusive employment through the creation of toolkits and simulations to support positive conversation around accommodations and disability disclosure.
- Dear Everybody and Imagine Everybody anti-stigma campaign: Dear Everybody began as a national movement to end stigma and eliminate bias against people with disability. The campaign helps generate awareness of disability stigma and ableism and encourages deeper conversation and action. In 2022, Imagine Everybody was introduced as an evolution of the campaign and was met with great success.
Want to get involved and advocate for disability inclusion? Resources and events can be found on the Rick Hansen website. You can also learn more about how our dedicated teams at Holland Bloorview are creating inclusive spaces and workplaces every day.
