A London doctor is working with provincial officials to put an end to homelessness in Ontario.
Dr. Cheryl Forchuck with the Lawson Health Research Institute has been appointed to the Expert Advisory Panel on Homelessness.
She is one of 13 experts who will work to define homelessness, compile province-wide statistics on the issue and examine how people fall through the cracks of Ontario's support systems.
"Nationally we've been working towards a definition of homelessness, if we can't agree on a definition then it's pretty difficult to count," Forchuck tells BlackburnNews.com. "There are many things that attribute to longer-term homelessness, part of what I've found is that issues such as mental health and addiction are a large part of the issue."
Lawson's recent work mainly focuses on reintegrating those who have suffered a mental health crisis into the community through the Transitional Discharge Model. You can read more about that here.
The government will develop an action plan to end homelessness based on recommendations by the panel.