Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In 2018, the departments of ECE and health collaborated to deliver the child and youth counselling initiative which brought counsellors into NWT schools to better connect children and youth to mental health support. In 2023, a contractor was hired to review the initiative and found that when it came to delivering services for youth, the program was largely a success. The contractor noted that having CYC services available in the schools has not only improved access but has also increased the identification of mental health disorders that previously would have gone unnoticed and untreated in children and youth. Notably, the few problems identified with the program were primarily issues associated with interdepartmental collaboration and understanding.
The report's top two recommendations were that health and ECE's working relationship be better defined and strengthened and that the CYC initiative continue to be delivered in schools. Perplexingly, the government responded that they agreed with the recommendation to continue the initiative but then proceeded to completely dismantle it, reducing the number of counsellors, removing them from the schools, and then replacing the initiative with a fundamentally different program.
The changes have been communicated as an improvement to the program, but it's very difficult to see them as positive or remotely aligned with the report's recommendations when they are resulting in counsellors being pulled from schools and mental health services being reduced.
In response to concerns raised by one of my constituents about these changes, the health Minister reassured that counselling would still be available through the community counselling program but also noted that the changes have reduced access to the program and children may be put on waiting lists who were previously receiving service.
Something isn't adding up here, Mr. Speaker. We had a program which was meeting kids where they are and succeeding in helping them, and it appears the program has been dismantled because our departments were struggling to work together effectively and felt it would be easier to change the program to avoid this problem rather than work to address it. Problems like this are why I advocated in my priority speech that we need to make governmentwide changes to shift to more collaborative models of working, and I am tentatively pleased to see the government strongly emphasize the importance of interdepartmental collaboration in their freshlytabled mandate. My hope is this shift will result in staff being given the tools to constructively manage conflict so situations like what's happened with the CYC program don't continue to occur. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Frame Lake. Members' statements. Member from Mackenzie Delta.
