Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, how many speech and language pathology services positions currently service preschool and school aged children in the NWT? Thank you.
Member from Monfwi. Minister of Education, Culture and Employment -- or is it health? Oh, health?
Yes, please.
Okay, sorry. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I don't have the actual numbers of how many speech-language pathologists that we have. But what I do know is that many of those positions that we do have across the Northwest Territories are vacant. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Okay, well, that's what I was going to say is how many of those SLP positions are currently vacant and how many are filled? That was the next question, but if she can still answer.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I can commit to getting that information back to the Member. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, one school in Tlicho region says 80 percent of its students need speech and language pathology services. So with that in mind, I want to ask the Minister how many children in Tlicho region are on the waitlist for speech-language pathology as compared to the whole of the Northwest Territories? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am unaware of how many children are on the waitlist in the Tlicho region. But what I can do is I can commit to getting those numbers. I also would like to highlight that, you know, the waitlist, yes -- however there is a waitlist, our speech and language pathologists that we do have are seeing -- and what they're doing is they're triaging so they're seeing youth under 5 and then youth between 16 -- 6 and 17 who have severe needs, so safety issues -- so speech-language is not just for speech but it's also for swallowing, so if there -- we're utilizing the staff that we do have for those severe issues so that -- and right now, so that means a lot of the stuff that's needed by them are the consultation piece so that they -- what speech-language and department does is they work with the schools, they do the consult and then they make a plan for that child, and that's what that -- you know, and that's the issue that we're having with the low numbers of speech-language pathologists in our system. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Final supplementary. Member from Monfwi.
I want to ask the Minister what is the current wait time in the NWT for speech-language services and, specifically, for children in school and why they are still -- why they are vacant, why there are so many vacant positions in the NWT? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, again, I can commit to getting the wait time for the children back to the Member and to all the Members. I mean, we have -- we do track a lot of these. And the -- so what -- but within this, what I would like to say is that we have these positions. We are unable to -- you know, we advertise these positions. If people don't apply on them -- they're unionized positions. We aren't able to contract out the service. That is -- you know, so there's no means to fill these positions other than trying to get -- if we can get terms or, you know -- but we can't even -- we're not even able to. What we're advertising is the positions. I know that in the school authority, some of the school authorities, they've been able to use third party funding in some of the school authorities to do contracts with speech-language pathologists. But they're not bound by the rules that we have to follow with our unionized employees. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Minister of Health and Social Services. Oral questions. Member from Frame Lake.
