Thank you. Two parts to the question, my first answer is based on the second part. Yesterday, when I was talking about going in to the communities, I was talking about OT and speech-language professionals. They don't currently travel to some of the smaller communities in the Deh Cho. I have provided direction to the department that I would like to see more engagement in smaller communities. It still depends on caseload. If there is only one person, it may not be appropriate or financially reasonable to do that, but if there is a larger caseload, we want our professionals to go into the communities.
With respect to the first part of the question, we are working on an improvement project in the Deh Cho region. It includes a number of things: using electronic medical records to track and improve Deh Cho region performance on screening and referring children who need rehab services. The improvement project is basically tracking a number of things: the number of children by community who should be assessed; the number of children who received the Well Child Assessment, which is an important part of the assessment process; and the number of children requiring an assessment or referral to speech-language pathology and occupational therapy but also referral to a paediatrician through the Well Child Assessment process.
The goal that we are working to was to identify the need earlier and ensure that there is earlier referral to these services. We are screening more children as a result of what we have already started as more children are attending the Well Child Clinics in the Deh Cho communities. We believe and feel comfortable that this is going to lead to more referrals for rehab services, which the team in Yellowknife is going to be able to provide once we actually create those positions and hire those people. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.