Harmonizing Location, Areas Served & Boundaries InformOntario Webinar October 20 th, 2009 John Allec, CRS Findhelp Information Services

INTERSECTION The major street crossing closest to an organization or program address AIRS recommended element: Travel Information, such as cross streets and public transportation information.

INTERSECTION For general, quick reference -- not for precise location. So list a major corner most people would be familiar with, not the actual closest intersection. Leave blank where there is no site address. For consistency, you should settle beforehand the “major streets” that you want to include (perhaps the bolded streets on a local map)

INTERSECTION List the north/south street, followed by the word ‘and’ and then the west/east street. Do not use characters like ‘/’ or ‘&’ -- those can cause technical problems. Always include appropriate direction indicators (York St W or rue York Ouest) even where buildings are on the corner of a dividing line. (Buildings on the south and east sides of a street are usually odd-numbered; on the north and west sides even-numbered.)

INTERSECTION Examples: Trent St and York Blvd W rue Trent et boulevard York Ouest Concession Rd, 1 km west of Guelph Line chemin Concession, 1 km à l’ouest de Guelph Line

LOCATION The appropriate city, town, suburb, neighbourhood or (sometimes) region indicating where an organization or service is based AIRS recommended element: Travel Information, such as cross streets, public transit information or other information to facilitate travel to the location. In CIOC: ‘Located in Community’ field

LOCATION Based on the SITE ADDRESS, select one value (only) from the Communities Table, the lowest and most precise value available.

LOCATION Where confidentiality is crucial (e.g. an assaulted women’s shelter): a vaguer, higher-level Community can be entered (‘Niagara Region’, for example, instead of ‘St Catharines’).

LOCATION Where there is no site address listed (e.g. for some virtual services), try to determine if a home community is publicly known (from MAIL ADDRESS perhaps). If not, select ‘Ontario’ (or even ‘Canada’) for province-wide or nation-wide services. Choosing ‘Null’ for Location (in CIOC) is not an option…. Records will not show up at all on 211Ontario.ca (e.g.) if any community is specified in the search.

AREAS SERVED The searchable value or values selected from the Communities Table that cover the entire catchment area for a service. All records must have at least one Areas Served value. AIRS required element: Geographic area served

AREAS SERVED These values are used for geographical searching on sites such as 211Ontario.ca. But they are not be displayed to the user. You must select one or more values (from the Communities Table), so that every part of an agency’s catchment area is represented and searchable.

AREAS SERVED If in doubt, choose a higher value. That does mean the Areas Served values may include more area than the true catchment area, but that is okay. Consider the province-wide system and be practical and flexible.

AREAS SERVED Code only for the ‘practical’ catchment area, rather than what might be the formal or official boundaries. (Formal or official boundaries must be displayed to the user, so those are entered separately into BOUNDARIES. For a general hospital, for example, only code for its surrounding region (e.g. ‘Peterborough County’), and not stretching out into areas that surround other similar hospitals in neighbouring regions (such as Hastings County). If the hospital insists they ‘serve all of Ontario’, you can list ‘Ontario’ as text in BOUNDARIES. That will not affect geographical searching.

AREAS SERVED A children’s hospital, though, could be coded for a large area like ‘Eastern Ontario’ if there are no others in eastern Ontario. But you would usually not list ‘Ontario’, as there are other children's hospitals in the province. On the other hand, the Bob Rumball Home for the Deaf (in Barrie) is the only such facility for older adults in Canada, so it is suitable that it have the value ‘Canada’.

BOUNDARIES A statement read by the user describing the catchment area or physical boundaries within which a service is available. On 211Ontario.ca, for example, this is the only catchment area information displayed (though with the tag ‘Area served’). AIRS required element: Geographic area served

BOUNDARIES The practice traditionally in Ontario has been to usually enter something in this field. But that needs to change. The standard is now that in the majority of records, this field should be left blank.

BOUNDARIES Boundaries should only be entered:  where there are official or practical restrictions as to where potential clients live and can be served, for example most food banks. Those outside those boundaries cannot be served, those within the boundaries will be served if they are otherwise eligible.  or where it is helpful to clarify that there are no restrictions, despite a geographically-specific name for example.

BOUNDARIES Many services we list typically provide their services regardless of where the potential client is situated, as long as they can make their way to the agency, e.g.:  child care centres  long term care facilities  homeless shelters  housing services  walk-in clinics  meal programs

BOUNDARIES For most such services, ‘Boundaries’ should be left blank, and no catchment area will be displayed to users of 211Ontario.ca, for example. The understanding is that if there is no catchment area specified, where the potential client lives is ‘not an issue’.

BOUNDARIES A big challenge for all of us is that if an agency is asked if they have a ‘catchment area’, they often feel that they must provide you with one – perhaps something vague like ‘Ottawa area’. That is typically not useful for anyone, and is often technically not true so therefore problematic. (They will indeed serve people from outside the Ottawa area, as long as they can get there). Such feedback should be clarified and ignored.

BOUNDARIES If there is a catchment area you should alert users about, enter any text in BOUNDARIES that best describes this. This might be:  a neighbourhood, town or city  a formal or an informal region  a large area such as ‘Ontario’ or ‘Canada’  a set of street boundaries  a set of postal codes  or any other type of text.

BOUNDARIES Crafting the BOUNDARIES text: Be as wordy as you need to be, as this information should be exact and thorough -- within reason. For very complex boundaries, you can use something like ‘Parts of…’ or ‘Eastern half of Ward 21’. There is no need to match how names are listed in the Communities Table (e.g. use ‘City of Hamilton’ rather than the Communities Table’s ‘Hamilton (City of’). In some cases, the text displayed in BOUNDARIES will just repeat the value hidden in AREAS SERVED. But you must enter both.

BOUNDARIES STREET OUTLINES: Where the catchment area is best described as the boundaries of four streets, order those as north, south, west, east, and indicate which is which: Abbey Dr (north) to Lake Ontario (south) * Park Lane (west) to Runaway Blvd W (east) List street names in full with any direction indicators, e.g. York St W.

BOUNDARIES Be scrupulous with phrases like ‘Greater Toronto Area’. Many agencies say they ‘serve the GTA’ meaning perhaps City of Toronto and Peel Region – but then you find out they can’t send anyone to Halton Region, York Region or Durham Region.

Questions??? John Allec