Private clinics offering speech therapy and other services to struggling students are making their way into public schools. Actors in the school network are observing the emergence of private agencies which compensate for the shortage of personnel in a public network that is at the end of its rope, as is the case in the health sector with nurses.
The pandemic has exploded the demand for specialized support for students with special needs. With more than 500 unfilled professional positions in the public school network, schools are struggling to meet demand. Private clinics are in demand like never before and adapt their services to the needs of parents and schools, found The duty.
The Ils et des Elles Center, which is located in Varennes, in the Montérégie region, thus offers “full services to schools that do not have the staff on site to meet their needs. Tailor-made offers can be built and adapted to the different levels of education (primary or secondary) ”. A number of other private clinics offer similar services.
The Varennes clinic is inundated with requests from anxious parents who are unable to get services at their children’s school. “Demand has doubled since the start of the pandemic,” says director Crystel Bourdon.
Its team of about fifteen speech therapists, occupational therapists, psychoeducators and psychologists has never been so requested. These specialists offer students in difficulty what their school is not always able to do because of the lack of resources, explains Crystel Bourdon: a medium or long-term follow-up. The luxury of time.
The interventions of the educator and her team are complementary to those of the school network, because they are generally not in the school, even if they offer this possibility to the establishments. “You can’t be with the young person all the time. We cannot intervene if the child becomes disorganized at school, ”specifies Crystel Bourdon.
Priority to the most “poached”
Martine, whose real name we keep silent since she is not authorized to speak publicly, knows the limits of the public and the private sector well: she works in both environments. This speech therapist spends three days a week in a public school in Greater Montreal, and one day in a private clinic. The other day of the week, she catches her breath. Because Martine is exhausted.
“In the school network, we are in total overload. All we do is put out fires, ”she says.
The public school where Martine works almost exclusively helps kindergarten and first grade children. It is essential to intervene from an early age. About a quarter of the 5-year-old kindergarten children at this underprivileged school already had speech therapy files open when they arrived in class.
Out of four classes, 25 children have very great difficulties. But barely five or six students, the most serious cases, are followed in speech therapy. “We have completely unintelligible children. We don’t understand them when they speak. We know that they will be unable to read or write after their first year. But we can’t take care of them, we have to focus on the most problematic children, ”says Martine.
She is shaken. “Speech therapy works. We have a real impact when we see a child about twenty times a year for one, two or three years. It is disheartening to let down young people who might get away with it. “
Where do these children end up? In a private clinic. If their parents can afford it. In the clinic where Martine works, 800 children are on a waiting list. The speech-language pathologist knows a child who cannot read or write who has been hanging around for a year and a half on this list.
Door open to private
Concerned about the breakdown in services, the Minister of Education, Jean-François Roberge, announced last month that the government could pay for services to the private sector to help students in the public network who do not have support in their school. It is up to the school team and the service center to determine which children can benefit from this measure. The minister also launched a project to simplify the administrative procedures surrounding the services, to quickly offer help to students in need.
José Pouliot, who taught 23 years at the School of speech therapy and audiology at the University of Montreal, welcomes the will of the minister, but fears the door open to the private sector. “To help a student, you also have to help the teacher. It is written in the law, we must offer conditions conducive to learning. You have to work on the whole class. You know, a young person who has a language disorder can be excluded by the boyfriends of the class, ”explains this young retiree.
Professionals in the private sector are as competent as those in the public, but they do not have this access to classes which is essential for school speech therapists, recalls José Pouliot.
Jacques Landry, president of the Federation of Quebec Education Professionals (FPPE-CSQ), warns the government against resorting to the private sector to alleviate the difficulties of the public network. “We have seen what happens in health with employment agencies for nurses. We must improve working conditions in the public network. Give more autonomy to professionals, promote teamwork, prevent them from having to work in several schools that are often far from each other, ”he says.