Yellowknife (Mar 29/06) - Speech therapy is on hold for many students in Yellowknife schools and the waiting list continues to grow.

Parent Brenda Colbourne said she’s frustrated with the situation.

Her daughter, eight-year-old Jaselyn, is struggling with pronouncing words because of a medical condition supposed to go away on its own.

“Her teachers aren’t holding it against her, but every year she’s going to struggle a little harder.”

Colbourne said she tried to get her daughter into speech therapy last September, but was told by the Stanton Medical Centre that the waiting list was nine months long.

Before this year, a speech-language pathologist from the centre regularly visited schools and helped develop programs for classroom assistants. Now that position is vacant and many students older than five or six have been put on a long waiting list.

“We had 80 students who were assessed or serviced by the speech pathologist last year,” said Anita Griffore, co-ordinator of student services for Yellowknife Education District No. 1.

She said the position at Stanton has been vacant since September 2005, even though the hospital knew since the previous spring that the pathologist assigned to both Yk 1 and Yellowknife Catholic Schools would be leaving.

“I know there is a shortage of people who can provide these services, but that’s not an adequate excuse.”

Yk 1 has hired a private speech language pathologist at the cost of $10,000 to develop a program for an influx of students with high language and speech needs in the kindergarten program at Mildred Hall.

Only 20 out of the 80 students receiving help last year still get some form of speech therapy, said Griffore.

The 80 children were in kindergarten or Grade 1, or were other students deemed to have special needs. There are currently no programs available for students in higher grades.

“This is a territory-wide problem,” said Metro Huculak, superintendent of Yk-1.

The key to helping these students is to get them help early on, say educators.

“If children who need language services don’t get them when they’re young, children might not be successful in school,” said Weledeh Catholic school principal Merril Dean. “Students are suffering.”

Dean believes developing language skills is important because they are the foundation of a child’s education.

While Ecole St. Joseph and Weledeh have hired a classroom assistant to help with language development, the school doesn’t have anyone adequately trained in giving help for speech and articulation problems, said Dean. In the Catholic schools, there are about 20-25 students receiving speech therapy at the Stanton Medical Centre, according to Catholic board co-ordinator of student services, Pat Sullivan.

But as many as 70 from Ecole St. Joseph and Weledeh Catholic school have been identified as needing some form of speech therapy, but are not receiving help.

Administration CEO of Stanton Hospital, Donna Zaozirny, said the hospital has been doing its best to fill the vacant position.

“We’re advertising in national newspapers and on the speech language pathology website and we regularly contact schools with speech therapy programs,” she said.

“But there is a shortage of speech language pathologists in Canada.”

Zaozirny said there are pathologists visiting schools in Yellowknife two afternoons a week to work with kindergarten students.

The program started last December.

Student services co-ordinators from the school boards say they have always worked together with the hospital, and hope the vacancy will be filled soon.