Our challenge is always to ensure continuity of care for inmates. Certainly staff could meet inmates' needs with more thorough knowledge if they were employees of the Correctional Service.
I would like to correct something, though. I mentioned 50 contracts a minute ago; actually it is more than 50 contracts with doctors and more than 50 contracts with psychiatrists. For psychologists, I don't know the exact number of contracts with them. I can provide that information to the committee members later, however.
For the Correctional Service, not having psychologists among its employees presents a challenge, since there is no continuity among members of the interdisciplinary team. We have to provide high quality service to meet inmates' health needs, so psychologists, social workers, nursing staff, staff, correctional officers and case managers all have to work together. They have to work as a team to respond in an integrated manner.
We are happy the ones on contract are there to help us, but we would certainly prefer to have those services provided by employees.