Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have a few questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services in regards to community wellness.
Thank you, Member for Kam Lake. Minister responsible for Health and Social Services.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, each community provides its own wellness plan that is developed itself. The department has a staff of three community development and wellness planners who work with the communities and their wellness plans to support their actions and priorities which reflect their own preferences. The community plans are now a few years old. So there is going to be a territorywide renewal process of the community wellness plans in the next fiscal year. And so that will give communities a chance to review what their priorities are and change them if they see fit. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the Minister's response. I've taken a look at the community wellness plans, and they range from anywhere from three pages to some are 20 plus pages. So they are very different, depending on what community that they come from. Also taking a look through them, I've noticed that not every plan contains mental health as a community wellness priority, for example. And while I know that perhaps there are competing priorities within communities, mental health and mental wellness is definitely a priority across the board for every single community in the Northwest Territories. I think we definitely hear that every single sitting that we're together here.
And so what I'm wondering is how the Department of Health and Social Services reviews those plans, identifies some gaps like potentially mental health counsellors or other supports that can be available, maybe it's youth sport and recreation, and how they work with other departments within the GNWT to identify what they're seeing as far as gaps for mental wellness within the communities? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That was quite a number of questions. What I want to say is that the communities develop the community plans, and they are uneven in length and content and scope. The point of having the community development and wellness planners in the department is that they go over these plans with the communities according to their this is a communitydriven process. So according to the amount of interaction that the community wants to have. They are not obliged to engage with this.
We, of course, recognize that mental health is an issue across the territory, and it makes sense that they be in the mental that they be in the community plans but there isn't an absolute obligation about what these plans should contain. And so my hope is that having been through this process once, communities may have a better developed idea of what these plans can accomplish for the renewal that's going to take place in the next fiscal year. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Yeah, I do admit that I'm sometimes longwinded when I try to ask a question. That, I will take as a pointer for the Minister. Thank you.
But the point I'm trying to make is that we have a responsibility or the GNWT has a responsibility to provide options for mental wellness so that our mental health professionals aren't overburdened and how can we support as a wholeofgovernment approach mental wellness in communities.
For example, the government has the child and youth mental wellness action plan, and within that, there is an objective in there to support communitybased organizations to deliver programs, and there's funding for the mental wellness plans that come along with that. But is there do the mental wellness plans support funding applications, then, from there? Are they a driver of funding to communities? Thank you.
Yes, thank you. In addition to the community wellness plans and that pot of funding, there are of course a number of different funds that communities can apply for. Those include addictions and aftercare supports, peer support, suicide training suicide intervention training, and so on. So they can be linked to the wellness plans or they may not be linked to the wellness plans. But when there is a deadline available for funding to a community on one of these particular subject areas, then I write to the community governments, Indigenous governments, and make them aware of this opportunity, and then they choose how they want to respond to that. People within the staff within the department are aware that capacity is an issue in some Indigenous governments, and they assist those governments in making sure that their application forms are complete so they can be considered for funding. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary, Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, another priority of Health and Social Services was to streamline application and reporting processes for various funding opportunities. In speaking with different NGOs, I know that there is a struggle out there for some of the expectations on some of the applications and reporting situations. Procurement does have a red tape working group and a mechanism for businesses to come back to the government and let them know what is lengthy or overburdensome and I'm wondering if health has the similar process. Thank you.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the priority of the Department of Health and Social Services, with the funds I mentioned, is in fact to ensure the money is taken up by Indigenous governments and communities governments so that they can spend it to the benefit of their population. And as I mentioned, there are staff in the department who work with those organizations to make sure their applications are complete.
