Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are for the Minister of Health and Social Services and are in follow-up to the questions my colleague Mr. Ramsay asked earlier. Mr. Speaker, the Grad Nurse Placement Program was intended to offer all northern graduates an offer of employment in the Northwest Territories. It did not guarantee that those nurse graduates would be offered a job at Stanton. I think when the original promise was made by the Premier of the day, the intent was that we would be able to fill some of our community positions where the need truly lies. Unfortunately, you will notice that most of the placements occur in Fort Smith, Hay River, Yellowknife and Inuvik. What are we doing to actually facilitate grad placements into communities where a real need lies? Our real staffing difficulties, Mr. Speaker, are getting nurses into small communities in the Northwest Territories. What are we doing to help facilitate grad placement in those communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Ms. Lee.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Graduate Placement Program is being delivered by HR on our behalf and we work with HR to address the issues that the Member is speaking about. When the nurses graduate from the college program, they need additional on-the-job training and often they work in Stanton because they do want to have some emergency and hospital setting so they become more comprehensively trained and be ready to go out to communities, because a community health nurse needs a different set of skills that they might learn; well, additional skills than what they learn in the school setting and the hospital setting.
The short answer to that is the Department of Health and the health authorities work with HR and the potential graduates to finish their training and make them employable to jobs available. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, I know that HR delivers the programs on behalf of Health and Social Services, who actually administers or actually holds the budget for health recruitment and retention. My question was pretty specific. I want to know what the Department of Health is doing, even if they are doing it through the Department of HR, but what is the Department of Health and Social Services doing to facilitate the placement of northern nurse graduates into community health centres throughout the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, we work through the Graduate Employment Program to look at their training needs, and if there are any out of the graduating program, match them with jobs available.
Mr. Speaker, I was wondering if the Minister could give me a sense of over the last two or three years, how many northern graduates have actually gone into community health centres through grad placement. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, I have to admit I am unclear about exactly what he is getting at. Mr. Speaker, I said earlier that we placed 11 nurses out of the Nursing Grad Program last year. Nine of them are in Stanton and two in Hay River. I think the Member is aware because his background is in HR, and especially in Health that different nurses have different requirements and where it is necessary, we work as an employer to match training and employment situations. Mr. Speaker, I think I need more information on exactly what he is getting at. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. Final supplementary, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will tell the Minister where I am going and then I will ask a question. Mr. Speaker, the department has money for and runs a program called Community Health Nurse Development Program which is designed to help northern nurse graduates transition from school into community health centres. We have used it in the past. In fact, I know that we have placed at least three northern nurse graduates into community health centres in the Northwest Territories in the last five to seven years, but I haven’t seen it working lately. I haven’t seen northern nurse graduates entering this program and transitioning into the communities. It is a program that works. It is a program that is valuable. We have so many grads coming, we need to be proactive. We need to make sure that we are doing things to help them transition to communities. At what point is the Minister going to place great priority on a program that we know works and will get nurses from the North into our northern communities? When, Mr. Speaker?
Mr. Speaker, now I see where he is getting at. Okay. Mr. Speaker, we have a lot of success in HR training for health care professionals. We graduated 11 nurses last year. We are expecting 19. We are expecting way more over the next couple of years. CHNs, as the Member stated, we have trained them and we have placed them in communities. I would be happy to undertake to get that information for the Member. I think actually now we have embarrassment of riches for nurses because we have been so successful with the Nursing Program.
As we go forward, what we see now is we need more community support workers and home care workers. I think part of the review that our department has to do is to work with HR and see what our HR health care training needs are and we will continue to work on that. Mr. Speaker, the point being is our department works very closely with HR and Education to make sure that people we train are in line with the demands that our system will require. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Lee. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
