Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m just going to follow up from my Member’s statement today regarding homelessness. Of course, homelessness, you can’t really talk about it without including some of the mental health and addictions that are occurring with people who are in homeless situations.
I just wanted to follow up, and I know the Minister is getting a lot of questions today, specifically from members of the Standing Committee on Social Programs. I just wanted to remind him that when we had our retreat, that was our number one concern, our priority, and we want to follow up on that. We’re halfway through our session and we want to make sure this gets dealt with.
I had questions of my own, but listening to the responses to Member Dolynny, one answer that really sparked my interest was the Minister mentioned that a patient, a client can walk into a health centre, a hospital, and request medical detox and they’ll get it. I want to know, when a person goes into a health centre or hospital, how long are they able to stay in that hospital for and get a bed for detox. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was referring to medical detox possibility at the hospitals. My understanding is that earlier on, during questioning on medical detoxification at the hospital, we agreed we could provide beds in the hospital; but to keep a bed vacant in hospitals all year long on standby for that would not be appropriate. So any bed in acute care can be used for an individual to detoxify.
I don’t think the health centres in the small communities would be set up for that, but they could possibly do it. With the right nursing staff in place, they could possibly do something like that if an individual was in some sort of distress over detoxification. But my answer was more specifically to hospitals. Thank you.
I really enjoy dialogue with the Minister on services that we provide here in the Northwest Territories. Any bed in acute care that would be allocated for someone through detox, and if the Minister understands when a person goes through detox, all the implications that happen with that psychosis where they can be deathly.
Is this Minister willing to put someone going through extreme detox in the same bed as a public person who might only be in there for the flu? Can I ask the Minister, is he willing to support a bed in acute care for somebody going through extreme detox? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I’m not a health professional. That responsibility for placing an individual in one of the acute care beds for going through medical detoxification would be made by a physician. Thank you.
I just want to state that I know we come down hard on the Minister all the time, and it’s not only his responsibility. We deal with homelessness, mental health, and you deal with justice, employment, education, homelessness. As a matter of fact, he’s responsible for the facilities here in the NWT.
The Minister also mentioned treatments, in answering a Member on this side. He said that treatment happens fairly quickly.
Can he give me a definite response on what “fairly quickly” means? I’ve been dealing with some of my constituents and I’d say it’s been over a month already, so I’d like to ask the Minister what he means by fairly quickly, if he could give me a date, please.
I’ll talk a little bit about the original process. The original process was quite a long delay, where an individual had to be clean and sober and follow up with some community counselling, and then wait for the next intake into a treatment centre to go. Now, with the contracts that we have in the South that have continuous intake, I don’t think it’s every day but I think the intake is on a weekly basis, so every week new people wanting treatment come into the facility.
Our idea is once an individual comes into the system and requests treatment, that we try to bring them into the next intake at the closest intake possible that we can get them down there is what we are trying to achieve.
I was advised that people were going out at the latest within two weeks, so I didn’t know there were individuals waiting for a month since we had discontinued Nats’ejee K’eh. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
I think we could solve this issue a little easier going forward here, and it all stems down to the written questions I had raised this summer during our last session, and that’s dealing with the Mental Health Act.
Can the Minister look at trying to speed that review up and looking at the Mental Health Act and how we can get that addressed so we don’t always have to be asking these same questions? Mental health actually takes care of the different legislative property. Can we see that speeded up during this Assembly? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, the target for finalization of the legislative proposal for the Mental Health Act review is for the winter of 2014. I’m hoping that’s early winter and not late winter 2014. If that’s not the case, then I will report back to the Member. My understanding is it’s early winter 2014. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
