Integrated Service Model (ISM) for Toronto Seniors Housing

The Integrated Service Model (ISM) enables Toronto Seniors Housing Corporation (TSHC) tenants to age in place with the support and services they need to remain engaged in their communities.

Developed by the City of Toronto, the City’s Toronto Community Housing Corporation and provincial health partners, the ISM was approved by City Council in 2020.

The creation of the ISM for TSHC advances the City of Toronto’s Tenants First Strategy, Toronto Seniors Strategy 2.0, and the expanded mandate of Seniors Services and Long-Term Care.

More than 15,000 tenants, aged 59 years and older, live in 83 buildings operated by TSHC.

The ISM is a new way of supporting TSHC tenants to age in place with dignity, comfort, respect and support. The ISM’s objectives are: to build trusting relationships between tenants and staff; to improve the delivery of housing services with an increased focus on housing stability; and to increase tenants’ access to health and community support services.

The ISM brings four key innovations to TSHC’s service delivery:

  1. An enhanced staffing model focused on increased staff-to-tenant ratios and more tenant support
  2. Seniors-specific policies to better respond to the unique challenges faced by seniors
  3. Access to a range of health, social and wellness services to tenants in their building, where feasible and desired by the tenants
  4. Designated care coordinators for each building to help connect tenants to the health and community support services they need.

Seniors Services and Long-Term Care led a process evaluation of the first year of ISM implementation to understand how well the model was rolled out in 2021, and to identify whether tenants were better off as a result. The evaluation drew on previous reports, collected input from over 200 tenants and staff, and analyzed key performance indicators.

The resulting report, Integrated Service Model 2021 Evaluation Report: Working with tenants to drive change, includes 12 recommendations and 54 practical ideas for TSHC to improve the ISM.