Building accessible, integrated, and high-quality mental health services for children, youth, and families.
Why Early Support Matters
%
of people living with a mental illness showed their first signs before the age of 18. Emotional foundations are not built in adulthood. They are built in the years we are not yet paying attention.
children and youth in Ontario are on a waitlist for mental health services right now. A developing nervous system cannot afford to wait 67 days. Or 2.5 years. What shapes a child does not pause for a waitlist.
returned for every $1 invested in early years mental health promotion. The strongest mental health outcomes are built long before a child reaches crisis.
The Challenge
Most children and youth do not arrive at crisis suddenly. They arrive after years of quietly carrying something that no one around them had the tools to recognize, name, or hold. Behind every child who is struggling is a family that felt it coming but did not know what to do. Behind every youth who has disengaged is a story that started long before anyone thought to ask. The mental health system was built to respond when things break down. But breakdown is never where the story begins. It begins in the ordinary, unwitnessed moments of a child’s life, and it is there, long before crisis has a name, that the most important work can happen.
Our Approach
Move Me Foundation works before the breaking point. We build programs, research, and community initiatives that reach children, youth, and families in the moments that matter most, not after the crisis, but in the years that determine whether one happens at all. We work relationally because every child’s mental health is shaped by the quality of the relationships and environments surrounding them. We work upstream because the earlier support reaches a family, the less that family will ever need. And we work collectively, because no single program or service can do alone what a well-supported community can do together.
Our Work
Rising Early Minds
Rising Early Minds focuses on early childhood mental health, with an emphasis on parent education, awareness, and the early foundations that influence emotional well-being.
Being YOU(th)
Being YOU(th) is our youth mental health initiative. It creates space for reflection, dialogue, and stronger understanding around the emotional and social realities young people face.
Collective Care
Collective Care focuses on the broader conditions that influence mental health across communities, institutions, and public life.
Research
Research supports the direction of the organization by identifying gaps, informing priorities, and contributing to stronger mental health practice over time.
Current Work
Adult Regulation Lab
The Adult Regulation Lab is a guided space where parents focus on their own emotional responses, not on changing a child’s behaviour. It helps adults identify the triggers and patterns that shape how they react, supporting more stable and intentional interactions over time. This focus is critical because children’s emotional experiences are shaped by how adults respond, yet these responses are often left unexamined. Without addressing this, the environment in which children are growing does not change.
Redesigning Schools for Emotional Safety and Well-being
This research focuses on how school systems, structures, and everyday practices shape students’ emotional safety and well-being. It looks at how these conditions are experienced in daily school life, and how they influence learning, belonging, and engagement over time. Schools are one of the few environments that reach nearly every child, making these experiences foundational to development. Strengthening them helps create more consistent conditions for both learning and well-being across diverse school settings.
Get Involved
Move Me Foundation grows through the contribution of people and partners who want to support thoughtful, meaningful mental health work.
Whether you are interested in volunteering, partnering with us, or supporting the organization, there are meaningful ways to be involved.