New wellness specialists being lined up for Yukon schools have a monumental task ahead, according to the president of the Yukon Association of Educational Professionals.
“It’s almost like these people need to wear capes because every one of them is going to have to be a superhero,” Ted Hupé told the News by phone on Nov. 29.
In March, Education Minister Jeanie McLean announced every school will have wellness specialists, touted at the time as wellness counsellors, by this academic year. That didn’t happen. The department has since started to define those roles and recruit staff to fill them.
The second iteration of the confidence and supply agreement, commonly known as CASA, signed between the Yukon Liberal Party and Yukon NDP caucuses stipulates the creation of “dedicated wellness counsellors or similar positions in all schools specifically dedicated to addressing the need for comprehensive mental health and wellness.”
When Hupé saw that spelled out in CASA, he knew that something was coming, but he didn’t know in what form.
“Any resources coming into the schools is a good thing. So, on the surface, we are very much in support of having a school wellness specialist,” he said.
“But when you dig underneath the surface, there’s many, many, many questions that I have, and those questions go back a long way.”
Those looming questions stem from two auditor general’s reports from 2009 and 2019. The latter report states the Education department didn’t know whether its existing approach to inclusive education was working.
“There weren’t any supports identified to implement inclusive education. There was no review and evaluation [of] the overall approach. And there was poor oversight,” Hupé said.
Hupè wonders what that means for this new initiative.
“How are we going to measure their effectiveness?” he asks.
According to an online job posting that is currently up on the government’s job board, the job for a bilingual school wellness specialist is a temporary term position that ends Nov. 30, 2028.
The posting indicates the hired worker will work with students, families, service providers and school staff to pinpoint student concerns and offer support services that contribute to success in school. The tasks will vary depending on the needs of each school, per the posting. The job requires a bachelor’s degree in social work or a related field, and experience in social work.
No one from the Education department was available for an interview by print deadline.
An email statement attributed to the department outlines the work that school wellness specialists will be doing.
“They will support student’s mental health and wellbeing concerns by providing counselling, advice, crisis consultation, interventions, programming, case management and connecting students to other professional or support agencies when necessary. They will work with school staff and families to resolve struggles a student is experiencing in attendance or emotional or social ways that may be interfering with a student’s learning success,” reads the email.
The department is aiming to hire 12 school wellness specialists, which is less than the number of schools in the territory, this fiscal year, and more in the coming years. Job postings have been up for the past couple of months.
The department is working with the superintendents and executive directors of the First Nation and French school boards on how these positions will be rolled out across schools based on school needs.
The school wellness specialists program will be assessed as it progresses using an evaluation that will be set up, and regular check-ins with schools will occur to see if their needs are changing.
“We are working hard to get these positions into schools as soon as we can,” reads the email.
Hupé wants these new workers to succeed. He hopes students will succeed because of them.
But he questions the proportions given the 5,500 students and 1,100 staff in schools across the territory. He is concerned that these roles aren’t permanent.
“My fear is that the expectation of these positions — of these people — is so high that we might not be able to get done what we want to get done,” he said.
“These people have to be high-level changing to get the job done.”
Contact Dana Hatherly at dana.hatherly@yukon-news.com