IDP refers to an Interdepartmental Service Protocol. The City's Interdepartmental Service Protocol for Homeless People Camping in Public Spaces was adopted in 2005. It is one of the City’s primary documents outlining its approach to a coordinated City-wide response to encampments.

Following the recommendations in Ombudsman Toronto Report: Investigation into the City's Clearing Encampments in 2021, the City of Toronto retained Third Party Public and Nbisiing Consulting, an independent third-party facilitation team, to help with an engagement process to inform a 2024 update to the IDP.

The purpose of the engagement process is to help the City gain broader understanding from different perspectives, voices, and experiences of current challenges with the City’s response to encampments and find opportunities for improvement that align with the City’s public mandate, values, and available resources.

The independent facilitation team is reaching out to:

• People with lived experience and knowledge;

• Community service providers, partners, and advocates;

• Business Improvement Areas; resident, homeowners’, and ratepayers’ associations; and

• Internal City staff from various City Divisions responsible for implementing the IDP.

To gain broader baseline understanding of key issues, experiences, and interests and to determine an engagement path with those who are interested in helping the City update its approach to responding to encampments, the independent facilitation team will start with one-on-one introductory conversations with key community partners, advocates, service providers, resident and business associations.

Following the introductory conversations, an engagement plan will be developed collaboratively with a shared framework for working together; opportunities for “deep dives” into challenges and solutions; and for determining a path forward beyond this process.

People with lived experience will be engaged through a peer-to-peer facilitation approach. The facilitation team will work with community partners, frontline support workers to recruit and train facilitators with lived experience for on site conversations, group discussions, or other ways of engagement (based on participant feedback and advice). Third Party Public will provide training, note-taking, and report-writing support to peer facilitators.

All project related information, updates, and aggregate summaries of the discussions will be shared on a publicly accessible webpage dedicated to this process: idpupdate.ca

Indigenous engagement is a key pillar of the IDP update and this vital process will be led by Indigenous facilitator and will start with seeking advice from Elders, Indigenous Service Providers, and community members on how to best approach this work in a positive way that engages with Indigenous people with lived experience. This advice will determine an engagement path moving forward.

It is anticipated that a staff update to City Council on the engagement process will be provided in the last quarter of 2023, with a final engagement report planned for the first quarter of 2024. As the engagement plan will be determined and finalized collaboratively with others, there are no set dates for this engagement work at this time.

All engagement summaries will be shared for review with participants prior to being finalized. These summaries, as well as the final engagement report will be publicly accessible and shared with all participants.

Honoraria will be provided to people with lived experience who are participating in the group discussions to share their experience and insight. Peer facilitators will receive stipends for training and engagement work.

The response to the Ombudsman Toronto and the update to the IDP is led by Toronto Shelter and Support Services (TSSS) Division at the City of Toronto. To help inform the update to the IDP, TSSS has retained Third Party Public and Nbisiing Consulting to design and deliver the consultation process. If you have questions about the consultation process, you can get in touch with Yulia Pak from Third Party Public at yulia@thirdpartypublic.ca.