Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am going to follow up on some of the alarming stats that were presented to us by the health authority in the Beaufort-Delta region on the amount of hours spent on counselling, the amount of no-shows, the referrals, especially the amount of new referrals. There were 699 new referrals to counselling services.
One thing that I have brought up in this House, and I’ll do it again today, is our psychiatric services in terms of assessments. Some of these clients might be going through counselling over and over again without getting the proper assessments they need because we only have so much psychiatric services in the Northwest Territories.
I’d like to ask the Minister, what is he doing to improve our psychiatric services so we can do the proper assessments for people in the Northwest Territories moving forward in this upcoming fiscal year? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Psychiatric services in the Northwest Territories have been enhanced through a partnership between Stanton Territorial Health Authority as well as Dalhousie Global Psychiatry and Yellowknife Health and Social Services. As the Member knows, there are two resident psychiatrists in the Northwest Territories, and mental health services, as I’ve just said, have been expanded to include the Dalhousie Global Psychiatry department of Dalhousie University. Both the on-site psychiatrist and those helping us through Dalhousie provide both direct and distance treatment consultation and assessment. This can be done over telehealth. So, we are enhancing our services that are available to our residents. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I’m glad the Minister brought up the Dalhousie program and gave us a little detail into how that’s working so far.
In terms of doing the assessments and if there are any residents of the NWT or clients that are going through this program that need some treatment for their psychiatric services, how many beds do we have in the Northwest Territories that would be able to house some of these individuals who might need around-the-clock services? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I can’t recall the number of beds in the Northwest Territories, off the top of my head, but I will certainly get that information back to the Member. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I know that one of our issues and our challenges that we have in the Northwest Territories is resources and infrastructure to house some of these individuals. We are going through the same thing. We also have the long-term care issues. We have an increase in our seniors population, and with that might come dementia and other areas that might require more services.
Does the government have some type of program with out-of-province jurisdictions that provide services to the GNWT? If so, how many NWT residents are accessing those southern placements? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
In the Northwest Territories there are a number of long-term care facilities throughout the Territories in different communities and regions. The Housing Corp has done some pretty impressive work in getting some infrastructure on the ground to provide types of support. There is a dementia centre here in Yellowknife. So, we do provide a significant number of services to individuals needing it.
I’m not sure I fully understand the Member’s question. Is he asking how many seniors are utilizing long-term care facilities outside the Northwest Territories? I’m not too sure what he’s asking, but I’d be happy to sit down with the Member, get the specifics and get back to him with the information. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I should have been a little bit more clear. I was looking at psychiatric services, out-of-territory services that are provided by other government or other NGOs.
What does the Minister have planned, looking at some of the stats that we have in the Beaufort-Delta? What is his plan, working with the health authority, to address these high, direct counselling services as well as these new referrals that are putting a strain on our current counselling services that we have in the Beaufort-Delta region right now? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
As I already indicated, the Dalhousie psychiatric partnership has really helped us create some stability within the psychiatric locum pool and has allowed for the expansion of psychiatric services throughout the use of telehealth. On top of that, we do have 65 community counseling positions, including community wellness workers, mental health and addictions counsellors, clinical supervisors, managers, as well as some funded NGO positions to provide community counselling services in the communities. They do things like assessments and crisis intervention, referrals for treatment counselling, follow-up and after-care. So, there are a significant number of positions out there doing this type of work, and with the addition of the advanced psychiatric, we should be able to take down some of that workload and get better care, better health and a better future for our residents. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
