Glen Abernethy

Not all grandparents who take children are going to run into financial difficulties, but where they do run into financial difficulties they are able to go to the Department of Education, Culture and Employment and income support. We do recognize that addressing the issue that the Member is talking about, those individuals who have not gone to child and family services but are taking care of their grandchildren and they do need some supports, it’s going to take an interdepartmental approach involving integrated case management. It’s going to take a number of departments, because the issues are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member indicated, we’re making fundamental changes to the way we provide child and family services here in the Northwest Territories with a focus on the family. Our goal is to keep children with their parents. Raising children is, first and foremost, a family responsibility. I understand when individuals are having difficulty, they often turn to their parents or their siblings or other family members.

If a child enters the system, whether it’s through a voluntary means or whether it’s through an apprehensive means, we do try to engage families to keep their...

Mr. Speaker, last May we presented Our Elders: Our Communities, a strategic framework outlining the government’s commitment to support elders and seniors who wish to live in their own homes and communities for as long as possible, and ensure that services are available when this option is no longer viable.

As the backbone of our communities, elders and seniors should be supported and given the best care possible. Seniors are the fastest growing population in the Northwest Territories. Over the past decade, the seniors demographic has grown at a rate of more than 5 percent per year, and this...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Member’s point of view and his concerns. Absolutely, as a government we’re committed to working with our communities and finding solutions that work for all people, but I do also have to remind the Member, as well as everybody else in the House, that we do have 33 communities, we do have fiscal limitations with what we can do and it might prove to be fiscally impossible to have individual women’s shelters in every community in the Northwest Territories. But working with the communities, finding solutions within the communities, by the communities, for...

We have five different regional shelters that are available to women and I know the RCMP are working closely with communities to try to find solutions that work with them. I’m happy to have a discussion with the community to hear their concerns and their desires and bring it back to Cabinet and committees. Thank you.

I support the extended family fosters. I support grandparents becoming foster parents when there is a risk of abuse or neglect within a family. But there are situations where families are making choices regardless of whether there’s risk of neglect or abuse. I want to find ways to support and we are working, but we do need to be cautious. Paying some grandparents to look after grandchildren when there is no risk of abuse or neglect would open the door for all grandparents to expect payment when they agree to look after their grandchildren. We need to ensure that we’re focusing on grandparents...

Where there’s no involvement of the child and family services of the requirements under the act for engagements, grandparents are, absolutely, free to welcome their grandchildren into their home, but the GNWT is not responsible for the financial costs of those individuals coming in unless the child and family services has been engaged.

If grandparents choose to take a child into their care and they do run into financial difficulties, as the Member indicated, they are available to go to income support if they are having financial challenges as a result of bringing those children in.

We are...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to recognize a few different individuals. First, I would like to recognize Dr. Pertice Moffit who is the manager and instructor of health research programs at the Aurora Research Institute as well as at Aurora College and also the recipient of the 2015 Wise Women Award for the North Slave. I would also like to recognize Brianne Timpson who is an instructor in the Bachelor of Science in the Nursing Program here at Aurora College. Just for the record, both Dr. Pertice Moffit and Brianne Timpson are co-authors of the report of Influences on the Quality of Life of...

Mr. Speaker, in looking at what other jurisdictions are doing to address this exact problem, there are actually models out there where we can do this exact thing. Individuals who have come in for psychiatric assessment or a diagnosis who are on medications, who are in our system, we can work with them to sign that release document that will allow them to leave our facilities, on the understanding that they will take the medications on a regular basis. If they don’t, then we can look at working with them to bring them back in the facility.

It’s a complicated piece of legislation. It’s going to...

In the GNWT we have long service awards and those types of things, but as far as a recognition that the Member is talking about, and I may have missed the point, but it sounds something like the teachers Hall of Fame or something along those lines to recognize our nurses who have made a real contribution, or to recognize social workers who have made a significant contribution over time. We don’t have those. Nobody has brought it up to me until just now. I think it’s a brilliant idea and I think it’s worth the exploration. It may take a little time to get there, but it’s certainly something...