Kathleen Westergaard is a Registered Social Worker (RSW), registered with the BC College of Social Workers and practicing as a Mental Clinician in Northern BC.
She runs a private practice is based in Mackenzie, about two hours northwest of Tumbler Ridge.
Since 2024, Westergaard has been lodging complaints with the BC Ombudsperson about current BC government policies which prevent residents of Northern BC from accessing funded Mental Health Services through Regulated Mental Health professionals.
“Northern Health refuses to refer patients to Regulated Mental Health Professionals like me who are authorized to bill BC government programs directly for funded Mental Health Services,” says Westergaard.
Westergaard was Born in Fort St. John and spent a number of years on Vancouver Island. While she was there, she got a master’s degree in social work. “I’m a registered social worker with the BC College of Social Workers,” says Westergaard. “What that means is I can provide services in private practice and bill governments and programs and insurance companies directly for those services. I’m a mental health clinician and registered with programs like the BC Crime Victims Assistance Program. I can bill to all the insurance companies and I provide mental health services. Specifically, I specialize in treating trauma.”
Westergaard says she was surprised when she moved back to the north and found it was very difficult for people to access services from professionals like her. “I started off letting the doctors in my community know that I was here and that they could send people my way and it wouldn’t cost them anything,” says Westergaard. “I could help them out with their mental health struggles, especially in the areas where I specialized and they wouldn’t have to pay me. I could just submit my billing directly to various government bodies or insurance companies. I was quite disappointed by Northern Health, who told me they wouldn’t refer anyone.”
This confused her. “It’s free. I do this work on behalf of the government. I’m contracted, just like doctors are. Unfortunately, my efforts to increase local Northern Health staff awareness and reliance on the services that I—and other RSW’s supported by the BC Association of Social Workers are funded to provide—have been unsuccessful. Given the extreme difficulties that most small, rural, northern communities that are served by Northern Health face with recruiting and retaining mental health professionals, I am deeply concerned that the people of Mackenzie and all of Northern BC are suffering with increased mental health struggles due to their being denied access to our funded services in this manner. This situation seems especially odd since payment for these services would come from qualifying provincial and federal programs instead of the Northern Health budget.”
She even tried to apply for a position with Northern Health, but didn’t even get a call back. “I have about eight years of university education. Plus as a registered social worker with the BC College of Social Workers, I have to maintain my credentials every year. If for some reason someone has a concern about how I’m delivering services, they can phone up the BC College of Social Workers and—at no cost—the BC College of Social Workers will look into the matter. This is really important when you’re working with vulnerable people or vulnerable groups. In BC, there’s a law that says that they’re required to tell you about all your options before you can truly consent to any sort of health care.
“There are all these specialized professionals who they could refer to. And we provide a very high level of care. Meanwhile, they have these crisis lines that are contracted to the United Way, who refer everyone to the BC Association of Crisis Councillors. But they’re all in cities. And in the cities, there’s lots of private practice people around; lots of different options. But we don’t have that luxury here in the north. The only option we have is—as far as I know—Northern Health Right? And Northern Health won’t refer people to these types of programs.”
“And then there’s the crisis lines, which are run by the province. They only refer people to these unregulated professionals.”
Westergaard says that if Northern Health were to drop their policy of not recommending private practitioners, it would go a long way to improving northerner’s access to mental health services. “I’m a regulated health professional. And there’s not very many of those. Northern Health does refer to other regulated professionals. We have a physiotherapist in Mackenzie. And he’s a regulated professional, just like I’m a regulated professional.
“The reason the province regulates certain professions is because they recognize that that’s necessary to ensure the public is getting what they’re expecting, so there’s oversight. Northern Health can—at any point—just refer people to me. They could allow their staff to do that.”
Second, she says, they need to stop referring people to unregulated crisis lines, and refer people to regulated professionals. “There’s been many legal cases where people have been referred by these crisis lines to unregulated professions professionals and they’ve been harmed. They’ve had bad things happen. And they have no recourse. They can’t do anything about it.
“If people like me were utilized more, people would have more choice. I think that there would be fewer mental health struggles.”
Norther Health says Provincial Health Authorities do not refer directly “to individual private social work practitioners who are not contracted through provincially-approved staffing agencies. However we do regularly make people aware of a wide range of options that might be of interest to a patient based on their health care needs. If people wish to seek a private service (and those with employer paid benefits sometimes do), we welcome them doing so. We encourage anyone in need of support to reach out.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
