Research & Evaluation Services
Building the Social Connection Toolkit: From 77 Ideas to a Toolkit Piloted in 17 Schools
Role: Research Project Lead, CHART Lab, Simon Fraser University
Project: Development and pilot rollout of the Social Connection Toolkit (SCT), a school-based resource to strengthen youth wellbeing
This case study is a look at how I approach applied research and evaluation work — the kind of process I bring to organizations that need to build, test, and refine a program with input from scientific evidence, practitioners and target audience- in this case, youth.
THE CHALLENGE
Youth mental health has been declining in BC for years, and social connection — belonging, peer support, and having caring adults around — is one of the strongest protective factors we know of. But much of what school communities were doing to foster that connection was not documented or shared. The CHART lab’s leading scientist wanted to move their data into action, by building a toolkit that pulled together what works, tested with input from the people who'd use it: educators, health practitioners, and the youth themselves.
I led the development of this Social Connection Toolkit from conception to implementation: designing the process for gathering ideas, gathering and facilitating the expert panels that shaped the toolkit, and leading the pilot rollout across three BC school districts.
WHAT I DID
Brought together four very different sources of knowledge. I designed and facilitated interviews with school and health staff, and developed and rolled out a crowdsourcing call to practitioners across BC. I worked with a team who were doing a rapid academic literature review, and with another team, gathered direct input from our Youth Advisory Council (a group of 15-18 year olds across the province). We started with over 400 initiatives gathered, and developed more stringent filters that resulted in 77 candidate initiatives — everything from breakfast clubs to peer mentoring programs to community gardens.
Facilitated two expert panels with very different needs. I gathered and led the adult expert panel — six educators, four health practitioners, a researcher, and a community partner — through the processes of building shared rating scales, and pair reviewing the initiatives for feasibility, acceptability, and equity. I worked with a colleague to do the same with youth reviewers, adapting the same rating criteria into language and process that worked better for youth.. Keeping both groups engaged and on schedule was a core challenge.
Landing on the final toolkit. I synthesized all the ratings and written feedback with my coordinator. When adult and youth ratings diverged, both sets of feedback were discussed so final decisions reflected the full picture rather than just resolving in favour of one group. The result was 14 initiatives spanning all four target outcomes: peer support, school belonging, community connection, and relationships with caring adults. I also developed accompanying resources that supported implementation- resource audits, implementation matrices, etc.
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Managed relationships across three school districts. Rolling out the pilot meant coordinating with district leads and on-the-ground "Social Connection Champions" across 17 urban, rural, and alternative schools. It’s constant relationship-building with people who had very different capacities, contexts, and appetites for important but ‘extra’ work.
Pivoted when the plan didn't match reality. Our original pilot timeline assumed schools would move at the same pace. We realized early that communication processes and existing infrastructures differed significantly across schools, and some needed more time, coaching and support. I adjusted our approach to meet them where they are at, with online or in-person meetings and webinars, co-presenting with youth in youth forums, 1-1 calls and emails, etc.
THE OUTCOME
The Social Connection Toolkit was recently piloted across three BC school districts. I'm lead author on two manuscripts coming out of this work — one on the development process, one on the pilot implementation. Writing up research for publication is part of what I offer clients: turning a project's process and findings into a credible, well-documented piece that can stand up to peer review and be shared with a wider audience.
Sidenote: I found that this project provided communities with benefits beyond the toolkit:
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It made the case that social connection isn't just "nice to have." Part of the value of this project was highlighting the evidence and providing the language to raise awareness that social connection is a core driver of student wellbeing, not a by-product of school.
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It gave schools language for what they were already doing. A lot of schools had informal practices already building social connections that were not previously recognized as important wellbeing work. This project provided people the language and framework to see and value what they were already doing.
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It confirmed there's no one-size-fits-all. School contexts vary enormously — urban and rural, alternative and mainstream, well-resourced and stretched thin. Listening first and meeting schools where they were without judgment was key to continued engagement, and getting them to adopt initiatives that were feasible and meaningful.
Why this matters beyond schools
The core of this project translates directly to other settings: gather evidence from multiple sources, bring stakeholders with different kinds of expertise into a shared decision-making process, build something that's evidence-informed but flexible enough to fit real-world constraints, and write it up so the work can be shared. I bring this same approach to program development and evaluation work for organizations and corporate clients — wherever the goal is to design or evaluate an initiative and know, with evidence, that it's actually working.
If you're looking for support designing, evaluating, or documenting a program in your organization — whether it's employee wellbeing, community engagement, or another people-focused initiative — I'd love to talk about how this kind of process could work for you.
