Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to follow up on the questions that were raised by my colleague with respect to addictions treatment facilities. Mr. Moses indicated three communities where there were buildings that he thought perhaps the government could look at for addictions treatment.
I would like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services if the Hay River Hospital, currently scheduled for replacement within a few years, is a building that could be considered. There are a lot of young people in the Northwest Territories that are obviously addicted to drugs and alcohol. I think this building, although it may not be good for a hospital anymore, certainly is good enough for a youth treatment centre. I would like to add Hay River hospital to the list of buildings that may be considered as treatment facilities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There is a considerable amount of work that has to take place in order to use a piece of infrastructure specifically for a youth treatment facility. Like I indicated, almost 100 percent of the youth that attend treatment are forced into treatment. There’s not a whole lot of youth from the Northwest Territories that are going into treatment at this time. There’s not a whole lot of youth identifying themselves to have alcohol or drug addiction issues at this time. So until we have a program developed that addresses youth treatment, it is very difficult to commit to using any facility for youth treatment. But we would look at any facility that could be used for treatment. Thank you.
So let me understand; the Minister is not denying that there are many youth in the Northwest Territories that could benefit from treatment, but there are not youth that are coming forward, identifying themselves as candidates for treatment and the ones that we are sending to the South are being forced into treatment because they’ve come in contact with the law or have been referred there kind of as a desperate measure. So we have a drug and alcohol problem amongst our youth and we don’t really have any way to get them into treatment. They don’t really want to go do treatment. So they’re coming out and looking for a facility in which to treat them. Wow! We’re deferring a problem. We’re deferring a problem until later.
I actually have the statistics right here, and I’ll table it later, on the number of youth in the Northwest Territories referred for treatment. In the last three years it’s like five, four and three. That is like a sad, low number.
Does the Minister have any idea of how we could encourage, any program that could encourage these young people that are addicted to drugs and alcohol to seek help and seek treatment at an earlier rather than later stage in their life? Thank you.
Thank you. There is the problem, the fact that there are five, four and three youth going to treatment. It’s very difficult to have a facility that services that type of number.
What we’re looking at with the Mental Health and Addictions Action Plan is we’re going to the communities and we’re trying to find ways where the youth can get treatment using one of the things that the communities asked us to do, is use the elders. Take the youth and the elders out on the land and see if that works as a treatment option. Because if they are self-identified, those are the numbers we have. If they’re being forced by the justice system or their parents, those are the type of numbers that we have at this time. It’s very difficult to put youth in an infrastructure type of residential treatment.
As MLAs we’ve heard the desperate cry of parents who have children that are addicted to drugs and alcohol that are turning to us as a government and saying what can you do for my child. Is there any mechanism through the Department of Social Services, through community wellness workers? Is there any tool that this government has access to that could work with these youth to encourage them to seek help, to help them self-identify as having a problem and seek help? It’s almost unbelievable to me that we have this big a problem with drugs and alcohol and yet we as a government say hey, we’ve got no need for treatment facilities because they don’t want to participate. Is there a mechanism within the department through our existing staff that could help with this? Thank you.
Right now the department, working with health and social services, is spending about $8 million targeted at treatment, mental health and addictions. But as people know in the House, a lot of that is for adult treatment; $2 million to Nats’ejee K’eh for adult treatment and $6 million to community counselling programs. That’s targeted to everyone, including youth. This is what we have. But the community wellness plans that we’re hoping to develop, that we will develop and that will complement our action plan, hopefully will identify ways that the community will see or advise us how they see their own youth being treated.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister raises the Nats'ejee K'eh Treatment Facility on the Hay River Reserve. That is an underutilized, to a large extent, facility. They do have co-ed treatment. They have men’s programs; they have women’s programs. Is there any chance of taking that existing infrastructure, the counsellors and the folks that are already working there, and having some time designated for youth treatment? Thank you.
Yes, I think we can do that if we talk to the centre. As we talked about trying to do some specific alcohol treatment in that facility so that we’re trying to utilize it more. We can talk to the community about specifically putting one of those blocks of time in for youth. Thank you.
