The former manager of our province’s Operational Stress Injury clinic says they didn’t have enough resources to meet demand when Lionel Desmond moved back from New Brunswick in 2016.
Derek Leduc took the stand at the Desmond Fatality inquiry in Port Hawkesbury Thursday.
Leduc told the inquiry Veterans’ Affairs knew about the shortage and were working to help fix it.
“We were funded for a higher compliment than we had,” he said. “Certainly, we would have benefited from increased psychiatry resources.”
Leduc said that forced them to put in a new rule expecting each veteran to have a family doctor to be treated at the clinic.
He said Veterans’ Affairs case managers were aware of the demand.
“They’d be aware of the limited psychiatric resources and they’d also be aware, for other clients they may have referred, that our recommendation is going to be, ‘seen in community,’ so it’s likely they were seeing more of that,” he said. “As we saw increasing waitlists and demands on service.”
Leduc said Desmond’s case manager never officially completed the veteran’s referral to the NSOSI.
