Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to ask a few more questions of the Minister for Health and Social Services. I would like to follow up on some of my previous questions.
My first question was, we have established a territorial respite care plan, from what I understand, and I asked the Minister for an update, but now I’m asking when that plan is going to be rolled out.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The plan will be rolled out once we are able to get our business case to the business planning process.
We are in the business planning process right now, and I think the Minister is well aware of that. We have a business planning process every year.
I’d like to know from the Minister where respite care and the territorial respite care plan sits in the priorities for the department. Is he negotiating with Finance to have the respite care expansion start in ’13-14 or are we talking ’20-21?
For this planning cycle, for this current business planning process, we are not bringing any new initiatives into the mix, but we are reviewing requests through our presentations to the Standing Committee on Social Programs. After our request on the Standing Committee on Social Programs, we review what they come back with. They write a letter back to the government indicating that these are the areas they want us to look at. We would then examine that and go through the process. But I don’t think respite care was a part of anything that came back from Social Programs. But we are moving through the process. I suspect that the next business planning process would have respite in it.
I’m still struggling to get a year out of the Minister. If the Minister wants us to indicate to him that respite care is an important priority, then I’m certainly sure that the standing committee can do that for him. I asked where it sits in the priorities for the department, and I don’t think I really heard an answer.
Again, I would like to know from the Minister… He says that there are no new initiatives. This plan is already in progress. I don’t think it’s a new initiative to expand a plan, but I’d like to hear from the Minister, if that’s the government stance, that an expansion of any plan that’s currently in the works is a new initiative. I would like to have that confirmed.
The expansion of a program beyond what the approved program would be, would be considered a new initiative. Even though we have midwifery currently operating in one community, should we expand the Midwifery Program and the plan to expand the Midwifery Program to a territorial midwifery program, and also some midwives in Hay River and so on, Beaufort-Delta, that would also fall under new initiatives. Yes, they would be considered new initiatives if they’re expanding upon what is approved.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Minister. My last question, I guess, goes to… Now I’ve totally lost my question and I’ll have to go to the one that I didn’t intend to ask.
The Minister talked about home care and that respite is available through home care. I’d like to ask the Minister if families needing respite care are using home care without any further resources added to the home care services in the communities, is that not just going to overwhelm the home care staff in our communities because they’re now providing home care for adults as well as home care for disabled persons?
The home care services that are being provided through the authorities and the communities will make a decision on whether or not they’re available to do respite services. All indications are that if respite services are needed in communities where we don’t actually have a respite program, that home care would be able to handle the extra workload of doing respite care, but through an approved process, that they would be able to handle respite care that was needed by individuals at the community level.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Mr. Yakeleya.
