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child advocate examines mental health supports for children
saskatchewan's advocate for children and youth says her office working on a report on children's mental health services.
mar 12 2021
2 minute read
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by: zak vescera
saskatchewan’s advocate for children and youth says her office is working on a “state of the nation” report on children’s mental health and the services available to them.
lisa broda said her office has spent more than a year going to every corner of saskatchewan, asking hundreds of stakeholders what’s working, what isn’t, and what they want to see next.
“it’s been a long-standing, persistent issue of this office for a very long time,’ broda said.
her office frequently hears of long wait lists to access mental health services for children, particularly in the province’s north, where scant resources cause many services to be centred in certain hubs.
prince albert’s youth psychiatry unit — which services the entire northern half of the province — had to close down for months because of a lack of staff. it has since re-opened at half capacity after dr. randy zbuk was recruited to reopen it.
“when they didn’t have the adolescent unit there, kids were coming from the north to saskatoon, which is going to put added pressure on the services here,” broda said. “so again, you’re still at a place of trying to get to some kind of space where kids aren’t waiting for so long.”
broda said the report, which she expects to table sometime in the fall, was prompted in part by reaching the halfway mark of the 10-year mental health and addictions action plan submitted to the government in 2014.
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she said the covid-19 pandemic only furthers the need for such a review, since many young people’s lives have been greatly disrupted over the last 12 months.
“i imagine some recommendations will emerge out of this to see how we can help move the dial with respect to service provision, because it’s a right children have,” broda said.
“they have the right to the highest attainable health services that we can provide. canada is a developed country, and we should be doing better than this, and better than this across the country, because this isn’t just saskatchewan.”
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