Tom Beaulieu

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I will commit to having the discussion. I think we’re a ways down the road with this, but again, there are certainly pieces of the puzzle that have to be put together in this whole area. I will commit to discussing this with the Minister of Education, Minister of Justice and also to, I guess, present this possibly as a supplementary or a budget item that will be presented to the committees in the Legislative Assembly.

Within the action plan, as the Member referred to, we are promoting understanding, awareness and acceptance of mental health. Those types of things are in the very initial steps in order for us to potentially intervene, if necessary, in the schools. But again, prior to intervention there’s a lot of other work that has to occur. Like the Member indicated, there are things in the action plan, yes, I agree, they’re there, we put them there for a reason and these are the very initial steps to understand it. This is an issue that is becoming quite a huge issue right across most communities, and we...

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I guess the first thing under the total umbrella of a chronic disease strategy is mental health. As we develop that strategy, we are looking at all aspects of mental health. As we have travelled to the communities, it was apparent that there needs to be some counselling at the schools and so on, targeted to mental health. Also, when the addictions forum is travelling they have indicated that they would like to look at some wellness in the communities, and they are going into the schools to talk to the students there and target also mental health. Thank you.

Thank you. A lot of our work, our regular health and social services work does address a lot of these recommendations. Like I indicated earlier, there will be some that we can’t do because we will be waiting for revisions.

We will continue to run about a half a million, $500,000 in trying to create child and family services committees. Also, we’re expanding the Healthy Families. Again, another key program that was requested through the recommendations of the review and we’re expanding that. We are trying to, I think this coming year we’re expanding into all communities in the Sahtu. That would...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A lot of the recommendations of the 73 recommendations involve revision to the act itself, the Child and Family Services Act. Our department is acting on some of the recommendations such as the incorporation of the child and family services committees in the communities which are not having much uptake. Also, expanding Healthy Families the quicker the better, it’s directly involved with early childhood development. But the majority of the work that needs to be done would be done after there are amendments to the Child and Family Services Act, and we’re on target to...

Part of our overall objective is to create more of the elder day programs. I and the deputy minister have been to Inuvik to look at the Elder Day Program that’s run out of the Beaufort-Delta hospital. We consider it to be very successful. There have been requests from some of the communities up there, and other communities, as well, to run a day program like that so that people who are preventing the elders from moving into long-term care and taking care of them at home, can go to work, and so on, while their elders are in a safe, secure day program. That’s something that we see as a great...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Any of the budget moves from Health and Social Services or other departments are first vetted through the appropriate committees. We do have a lot of intergovernmental work that goes on right here in this area. Currently, we are trying to work with trying a program that’s run federally, called Aging in Place. That is part of our continuing support for seniors, and that’s just trying to do some health programs and other programs that are needed to keep the people in their homes and prevent them from going into long-term care. Thank you.

Thank you. Unfortunately, I do not have the latest detail on what we’re doing to close that gap with 16 to 18 year olds in the NWT within the act. I’m almost positive that it’s going to require revision to the act as per the legislative proposal, but I can’t say 100 percent that we can do more without a revision. So I will commit to the Member and to the Assembly to update the Members on that specific item within those recommendations. Thank you.

Thank you. I don’t know the exact reason. Reasons vary, I do believe, from community to community on why the committees were unable to strike these committees. They vary from not wanting to be involved in the child welfare of other people, and sometimes communities are so small that all child protection and child welfare issues seem to be of a relative child and so on. For some, actually, the fact that the authority staff are not consistently meeting with the community and putting a consistent push into trying to get these child and family services committees struck and operational is largely...

Mr. Speaker, in my role as Minister responsible for Seniors, I would be very pleased to have a discussion with the Minister of Education and the Minister of Justice to see if we can increase the role or add some more responsibility for seniors to go into the schools or into any of the other facilities where there are our people, and see if the elders can assist them and assist the students in the schools, with the culture and whatnot. We’d be pleased to do that. We think that would be important and something that I think has been tried, and I think it’s been proven that it’s a positive thing...