Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think there are many important questions being raised today, and I think we would all benefit from further discussion, certainly, on a new treatment centre versus programs being put in place and, of course, why a 30-day period of sobriety is required before treatment.
My statement today dealt with the impact of substance abuse on early childhood development. As I pointed out, community-based early childhood development programs, pre- and postnatal programs, parenting workshops, mother and tot programs also provide a contact point for parents who may need to seek help with their addiction problems.
Can the Minister tell me whether, as we work towards completing the Early Childhood Development Framework, the opportunity for parents to raise their issues of addictions and seek help will be given a place in design of that programming?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
One of the key pieces of the early childhood development work that we’re doing is supporting healthy families in the communities. We consider that to be a very successful program. There are large groups in the communities for healthy families where there are mothers in there at a prenatal stage, right to children under one. There are those types of programs and there are other programs that are in these healthy families for two, three, and four-year-old children with their mothers in a program. A lot of that is our work in the early childhood development, is that we are looking at healthy families as a way to help combat this issue of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.
Thanks to the Minister for those comments. The Minister’s department is now embarking on the consultations and fact-finding of the new addictions forum. This forum should examine not just individuals’ needs but families’ needs, as well, I assume.
Can the Minister tell me whether the terms of reference for the new addictions forum include an examination of how better to use the health and social services system as a whole to make contact with those in need of treatment and programming in the area of addictions?
The terms of reference for the addictions forum will be to get the information, gather the information and the recommendations. Their recommendations are going to be to ourselves and will consist of this is what the issue is and the community thinks this is the way it should be addressed. Our responsibility at Health and Social Services would then be to apply our authorities’ and our department’s work to what the recommendations are. It’s going to be at that point where those health programs and what the recommendations from the addictions forum will meet. It’s not specifically in the mandate of the addictions forum.
Again, I’m pointing out opportunities here and I just hope the Minister and his staff will take advantage of them.
The Minister of Health has announced that the community family resource centres will begin to be introduced as the local seat of early childhood development programming. Because healthy families are essential to healthy children and their development, will the Minister say how the development of this delivery model will facilitate the intake of parents into addictions treatment where needed?
The healthy families is not really linked into the addictions treatment. We could talk about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder within these groups where we’re trying to build awareness of the issue and the cost of the issue, as the Member indicated, many of those factors. For the mothers to segue from healthy families into treatment centres, I don’t think is something that is part of that mandate of the healthy families or the community children resource centres.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thank you to the Minister. Obviously, all of these could be important portals for addictions treatment. Not that they need to provide it in their own right, they have different objectives, but they need to be linked. I’m talking about linkages here.
My last question is: Have we developed and begun a curriculum that builds awareness amongst young teenagers, awareness of the consequences of both alcohol and drug addictions to both the realization of their full potential and to the well-being of their future children?
Building a curriculum for students realized that that was something that has come as a request. There are health programs and addiction programs and so on in the high schools. That is something that ourselves… It’s not early childhood development work but ourselves and Education that would be prepared to collaborate on in the development of curricula for that, but it’s within the mandate of ECE in order to develop that curriculum.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
