Whether it's tackling mental health stigma in courtrooms, increasing understanding of complex diagnoses, or building anti-racist capacity across organizations, HSJCCs bring together key players to build a fairer justice system for people often left behind, left out, or discriminated against, including those living with mental health challenges, addictions, or disabilities. 

Established in response to a recognized need to coordinate resources and services, and plan more effectively for people who are in conflict with the law, the heart of the HSJCC network’s mandate is to reduce the barriers and inequities that people face in navigating both justice and mental health systems. 

More than 1,500 members – crown attorneys, judges, community mental health workers, hospitals, legal aid, people from the police, corrections and bail systems, and people with lived and living experience – make up the HSJCC network across Ontario. 

The network includes 14 regional committees and more than 30 local ones, which are formed as needed to address emerging issues in specific communities. Together, they focus on education, training, service coordination, and policy change.  

While the structure is complex, the aim is simple: to improve outcomes for people with mental health or substance use issues who are involved or at risk of becoming involved in the justice system. 

The Toronto Regional HSJCC has four local committees: Scarborough, Downtown Toronto, West Toronto, and North York. Each local committee works with the regional and provincial bodies to identify local challenges and shape shared responses. 

Over the past year, the Toronto Regional HSJCC has led efforts to build stronger partnerships across sectors, deliver anti-racism education, and reduce barriers to services for people navigating the justice system. It also helped launch a care room at the new Toronto Regional Bail Centre and continued to address transportation and digital access issues for people attending virtual court. Through this work, Toronto’s HSJCC has shared its experience and provided other HSJCCs with relevant content, information, and practices they can use in their own work. 

At the heart of this coordination is Domenica Dileo, who has served as the Toronto Regional HSJCC Coordinator for more than 13 years. She says that her colleagues call her “the glue of the program,” and in learning about the scope of her work, it becomes clear this is true.  

Domenica supports the Toronto Regional and local HSJCCs and their more than 260 members by managing meetings and workplans, ensuring information is shared regularly and transparently, tracking deliverables and reporting on outcomes, and helping to ensure that discussions turn into meaningful action.  

She also works closely with committee co-chairs to develop and promote educational campaigns – a central part of the Toronto Regional HSJCC’s work. 

The engine driving the HSJCC’s work is the passion of its members, and especially the co-chairs, who step up to provide leadership and are selected by the members. “The people who take on co-chair roles do it because they care,” Domenica explains.  

One of the HSJCC’s strongest tools for change is education. Local committees meet regularly to share information and tackle issues like housing, treatment access, or navigating new court systems. The Toronto Regional HSJCC meets four times a year to share local updates, identify broader trends, and strengthen links across sectors.  

Each year, Toronto’s four local committees gather in person at the Ontario Court of Justice in Toronto for a “mega meeting” to review progress, look forward, and reconnect. 

Another important educational tool is Lunch-and-Learns, coordinated by Domenica and held eight to 11 times a year. These short, practical sessions were created to reduce stigma about mental illness in the justice system. Prior to the COVID pandemic, they were held in person but have now expanded online to reach audiences across the province. Some are returning to hybrid formats, although with the new central courthouse in Toronto, there are some logistical and technical challenges that continue to be worked out. 

Each session is led by an expert and shaped by the interests of HSJCC members. “We’re very member-driven and we want to make it as relevant as possible,” says Domenica. Sessions lean into the latest research and evidence, centring people with lived experience and offering practical tools and techniques that can be immediately applied in real-world settings. 

Recent topics have included housing law for people re-entering the rental market, Ontario Works and ODSP (the Ontario Disability Support Program) for clients who are homeless or precariously housed, and communication supports for people with speech or cognitive disabilities navigating the legal system. 

One especially popular session, led by psychiatry resident Dr. Morgan Glass, focused on understanding mental health diagnoses and how they affect people’s lives. Dr. Glass helped demystify major mental illness diagnoses and offered concrete tools for participants to explore the types of accommodations that might be needed and the principles for working with those with mental health conditions – and, as he says, “people in general!” 

The HSJCC’s most ambitious educational series, The Colour of Justice, emerged from the desire to prompt concrete operational change and build anti-oppressive and anti-racist practices within organizations in the justice system. 

 Now in its third year, the series was developed in partnership with Dr. Rai Reece, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University, whose work examines how incarceration is shaped by racial capitalism and white supremacy. The Colour of Justice sessions consistently draw strong attendance and engagement. 

The series begins with an “anti-racism 101” session, which grounds participants in the principles of anti-racism, decolonization, and anti-oppression, and engages them in conversations about the impact of colonialism, multiculturalism narratives, white supremacy, power, and privilege. 

Other sessions explore different facets of the Indigenous, Black, and racialized experience within the justice system. There are also sessions that provide practical guidance to organizations working in the justice sector on how to implement anti-racist and anti-oppression policies, focusing on conflict resolution and tools for organizational change.  

One powerful lunch-and-learn, led by legal scholar Jonathan Rudin who helped establish Aboriginal Legal Services and now serves as its Special Programs Director, asks: How do you fix the system when the system is the problem?  

Offered in September 2022 and most recently in October 2024, the topic attracted more than 330 attendees who learned about how systemic discrimination within the criminal legal system contributes to the mass incarceration of Indigenous people. Attendees left with a much better understanding of the Supreme Court of Canada’s R. v. Gladue decision, which requires the courts to consider the broader context of Indigenous lives in sentencing, and with tools they could use to more effectively apply the Gladue principles. 

For people who are interested, the sessions and hand-outs from the HSJCC’s lunch-and-learn sessions are available to the public at: www.hsjcc.on.ca. 

At the core, HSJCCs are about making the justice system more inclusive, equitable, and fair. “A lot of the struggles [people involved in the justice system] face are out of their control,” Domenica says. “Not having housing or shelter, not having access to culturally appropriate services, treatment or assessments. These structural issues really hinder people's abilities to succeed and recover.” 

The HSJCC’s work is about interrogating that structure, dismantling its flawed premises, and rebuilding it in collaboration with everyone who is involved in it. By coordinating efforts across sectors, hosting meaningful education, facilitating honest conversation, and offering concrete opportunities to problem-solve, HSJCCs are helping to fill the cracks people too often fall through – and making those cracks less likely to form in the first place.