Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have some questions in follow-up to my Member’s statement today. As I mentioned, the government is doing a lot of good work in terms of supporting foster families and getting the programs in place to make sure that children in the NWT are given the proper services that they are entitled to. I just want to follow up with the Minister of Health and Social Services in terms of trying to educate residents of the Northwest Territories how this government can support them should they want to become a foster family in the community, or else if they want to take the options of taking care of one of their own.
So I’d like to ask the Minister of Health and Social Services, what kind of support is in place for any immediate families that could take care of another sibling’s child or an aunt or uncle’s child where they can provide the services and an immediate family member will obviously want to keep the children within the family? So what services are provided for immediate family members should they take the responsibility of caring for a child? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Minister. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This is actually a fairly complex question because there are so many different scenarios where we could apply. It really depends on the nature or the reason the child has entered into the child and family services system.
If a family member asks another family member to take care of their child, there are no supports, but if the child enters the child and family services system by way of the legislation that we have available to us today and the goal is obviously to keep the children in their communities or with families as much as possible, we want families to be whole and we’ll find ways to keep them together. If a person’s child, they want them to stay with a family, that family member would have to go through the foster program and become a foster parent in order to receive the supports. If they don’t then they don’t get the support.
This is a question that came up during a review of the Child and Family Services Act and this is an area that I and many of the Members who participated in that were very, very concerned about. We wanted to find better ways to keep families together. This is something that I think still needs a lot more work within this department and I’m committed to working with the department, with Members to find improvements in this area. Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate the Minister’s response. Obviously, when a family takes the responsibility to care for another family member’s children there is added stress and there’s added financial pressures that can’t be alleviated when sometimes it’s on the grandparents, who live on a pension. I mean, we can develop those policies, looking at those policies just specifically with people who are on a fixed income, such as grandparents. I mean, let’s start there because the grandparents are usually the ones that take care of their children’s children and there’s no financial benefit there.
Would the Minister be willing to create a policy that would protect our seniors, our elders that take care of their grandchildren and who do it for the sake of keeping the child in the family? So would he be looking at creating a policy specific to start off for our seniors? Thank you.
Thank you. This is where it gets really complicated, as I’ve said. If we’ve got a child entering the system and we want to work with the family to keep the child in the community and if the grandparents are willing to, through the foster screening assessment they are going to get the financial support they need to provide for those kids. But as we heard clearly when we went out to the communities during the Child and Family Services review, not all kids are entering the system, but we still need to find a way to support them.
This is something that was recommended to the department to look into and I, as the Minister of Health and Social Services, still stand behind those recommendations that were made in the previous Assembly and I’m still interested in attempting to find solutions that work for all the residents of the Northwest Territories when it comes to child and family services. Thank you.
Thank you. When we talk about these, I guess I wouldn’t call them deals, but these agreements between the parents and the siblings, sometimes there’s mediation in there and that mediation comes from the social services worker themselves to say our objective is to keep the child in the family and that mediation, when it happens and the grandparent or the family member accepts it, then they’re also accepting that there are no financial incentives to go along with that. Speaking of which, can I ask the Minister, what incentives are there out there to get our families in the Northwest Territories to become foster parent families?
In the Member’s statement he talked about the Foster Family Coalition in the Northwest Territories, and I’d like to take this opportunity to applaud the coalition for providing a unified voice dedicated to improving the quality of life for children in the Northwest Territories. I think they do an incredibly important job. We work with the coalition to help encourage people to become foster parents, and the coalition is getting out across the Northwest Territories with departmental staff providing training and information sessions to encourage people to become foster parents. I think our numbers, in my opinion, are still lower than they should be. I don’t think we’re getting the numbers that we need.
We do provide financial incentive to foster parents to care for children, and it was a recommendation of the 16th Assembly to actually look at the rates that we provide. The department is currently completing a foster care rate review to identify the current cost of living and expenses required to support children, and I expect that to be out in the next month or two, at which time we will be able to discuss increasing those rates or stabilizing those rates so that the foster parents have the dollars they need to adequately care for the children they are bringing into their care.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. On the flip side of that, when we have foster families that are caring for the individual or the child, at what age does the child not become the responsibility of foster families and are set to become independent and go out into society? Is there care or treatment or an area where the GNWT still supports these young adults, because right now what we do see is a lot of young adults who continue to stay home with their families because there is no support, especially in some of the small communities where there might be some housing shortages or some jobs that might not be available for some of these young adults. At what age do we take these kids out of the foster families and is there a plan of care for them when they do leave?
This gap in the 16 to 18-year-olds is what I think the Member is alluding to. Right now, when a youth turns 16, they are not required to receive care under the Child and Family Services Act. They can, in a sense, opt out and opt out of foster care. But, at the same time, they can opt in and they can volunteer to stay within the system and continue to receive the supports of the foster parent who will continue to receive support until they’re 18. But this is an optional thing. I believe, and I think the 16th Assembly clearly articulated, that we have an obligation as de facto guardians for those individuals that are 16 to 18 to help them as they’re going away and pursuing education, help them find a path in their lives, so we encourage them strongly to opt in to support through foster care.
I have directed the Department of Health and Social Services to work with Education, Culture and Employment to see if there’s any opportunity to provide some sort of income support to those individuals who opt out, because I do believe we have a responsibility to provide some support to these individuals once they hit that age of 16 where they can technically opt out. I think a lot more work needs to be done in this area. This is an area that I would like to see addressed under the Child and Family Services Act as well.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
