The Youth Agency Collaborative (YAC) is a collective impact backbone organization that unites youth-serving agencies across the Alberta region around one shared purpose: achieving better outcomes for youth with complex needs. Unlike traditional capacity-building organizations, YAC strengthens the ecosystem by aligning agencies, integrating shared data systems, and amplifying youth voice so that young people receive seamless, holistic, culturally grounded support—no matter where they enter the system.
The Challenge
Across Alberta, young people aged 15–25 are facing unprecedented challenges: rising houselessness, family violence, intergenerational trauma, substance use, gang involvement, and worsening mental health crises. Youth in crisis are often forced to navigate fragmented systems, retelling painful stories to multiple agencies and receiving inconsistent care depending on where they go.
“Youth shouldn’t have to retell their trauma to get help.”
Our Response: The Youth Agency Collaborative
We are a passionate community of agencies and experts (youth and youth workers) who have committed to work together, track and share the same outcomes, and focus on holistic complex care for youth with complex needs.
What We Are Building: A Better Framework of Care For Better Outcomes
After 7 years of ongoing research, experimentation, and modelling, YAC youth agencies have built out a framework of existing and needed components in the youth-serving system and the pathways, and tools required to support young people in a more holistic and integrated way. This framework and agency integration pathways are built by youth workers and informed by youth with complex needs and then reviewed monthly for continuous improvement.
