Sandy Lee

I’m not sure what $1 million he’s referring to, but I can tell the Member that there are different types of respite care programs that the Department of Health and Social Services is involved in. There are respite care and long-term care facilities in our health facilities and in institutional settings as well as a respite program that we are trying to expand in the Territories. As the Member is aware, in Yellowknife we had a pilot program with an NGO two or three years ago, but we saw the need to expand that program to outside of Yellowknife and we have allocated, under Strategic Initiatives...

Mr. Speaker, I have to admit I am unclear about exactly what he is getting at. Mr. Speaker, I said earlier that we placed 11 nurses out of the Nursing Grad Program last year. Nine of them are in Stanton and two in Hay River. I think the Member is aware because his background is in HR, and especially in Health that different nurses have different requirements and where it is necessary, we work as an employer to match training and employment situations. Mr. Speaker, I think I need more information on exactly what he is getting at. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I don’t know how to be brief, so I am going to ask the deputy minister to give more detail, briefly. Thank you.

We do that already. We work closely with the Housing Corporation. So if the Member has specific situations or a constituent that she would like me to look into, I would be happy to do that. As I’ve stated, the Housing Corporation does have a program that addresses the persons with disabilities and, of course, Health and Social Services works closely with ECE and Housing and Justice or whoever we need to.

The program change at Joe Greenland Centre is to use the facility for what it was really meant to be. It was not designed for level III and IV care that we’ve delivered there for the last number of years. Since 2007 we’ve had very few residents there.

When this wing is renovated and converted into independent units, we don’t anticipate that we will have staff in that building. It will be like the other wing. There will be a caretaker and that sort of support.

What we anticipate is to expand the Elders Program for the entire community. Right now for the entire community of Aklavik there’s one...

We have, I believe, 62 positions dealing with mental health and addictions already. There is underground support for that work. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Graduate Placement Program is being delivered by HR on our behalf and we work with HR to address the issues that the Member is speaking about. When the nurses graduate from the college program, they need additional on-the-job training and often they work in Stanton because they do want to have some emergency and hospital setting so they become more comprehensively trained and be ready to go out to communities, because a community health nurse needs a different set of skills that they might learn; well, additional skills than what they learn in the school setting and...

Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the Member’s comments on that. This initiative is part of our Building Our Future Strategic Initiative Committee project and Ministers across departments and deputy ministers sit in this group. I will undertake to follow up on that evaluation suggestion and follow up with the Member on that.

I just want to add one more note about this Small Community Homelessness Funding. I take the Member’s point, but just going back to the history, those programs were set up precisely to address the needs of small communities that didn’t have shelters. I understand...

The Member knows that the Department of Health and Social Services is not in the business of building houses, so we would not be involved in that. The Member also knows because she had asked in the past and I’ve given her information about the kind of support we provide for persons with disabilities. We have various programs. The Member mentioned an assisted living complex in Hay River, but we also have group homes, we have supported living, we provide respite care. I mean, the persons with disabilities don’t come in one shape and size and need, and so individuals are assessed and they are...

Just on the first two points, the Member is right that we had as part of the business plan that we would like to have five children and family services committees set up, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we will put resources or that dollars are attached to that. The business plan is a plan. It’s what we want to do as a department. There are dollars allocated but there are lots of other policy framework and directives that we lay out there.

The second thing is, yes, I agree with the Member that flexible approach is desired and that is what we have been doing. The director of our child and...