Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I have some questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services in regard to some of the questions that I had posed yesterday. I go on to the website for the NWT Helpline and there’s a reference right on the top that says, “When you call, we will listen.” In fact, after I made questions in the House yesterday, I did get some correspondence from some of our community providers that work in counselling and they said they wanted to make a call to the NWT Helpline to see how helpful it is for some of the people that they might work with.
I’d like to ask the Minister, first of all, are the positions at the NWT Helpline, between the hours of 7 and 11 at night, a staffed position or is that a volunteer position?
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will answer that question, but I just want to give a little bit of background first. The Canadian Mental Health Association, the NWT division, made a decision to discontinue the NWT Helpline as well as other services while reviewing their current operations. To avoid any disruptions, the Department of Health and Social Services has been working with the NWT division to transfer ownership of the NWT Helpline, the phone number and the website, to the department.
The Department of Health and Social Services has an interim contract in place with Sykes Assistance Services Corporation, or Sykes, to operate the NWT Helpline until July 31, 2014. Sykes offers a number of speciality telephone line services across Canada and other countries, including roadside assistance to quick lines. The contract is in place for six months from February 1, 2014, to July 31, 2014, so that requests for proposals can be advertised, so we will be going out to seek a contractor.
The current contract comes in two phases. Effective February 1st we will have and we will see an increase in operations from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. seven days a week. This is an increase from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. which we had previously. Services through individual people on the line include emotional support for crisis and non-crisis situations, referral to community-based services, engaging third-party services when required and support to concerned family members and friends.
We do have a second phase that is coming into place, which is going to increase the hours of service and operations to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that will be coming in on March 1st.
All the information is appreciated, especially when you heard around the table today the lack of nursing services that we have in some of our small communities that need to access this helpline. What we heard today just right now from the Minister was definitely news to me in terms of the contract and also that the services were down for a while when the contracts were being put over.
Can I ask the Minister how was this mentioned to people of the Northwest Territories and to the communities? When I look on the website, there’s nothing that says that the services are going to be down at all, so how do people know that it’s down? He did mention February 1st it was starting up again. I want to know if the services are actually in place right now as well.
Actually, interestingly enough, we had actually just approved the communications plan on this today and I was going to share all this information with the Members before I heard the Member make his statement today. We do have a communications plan. We are going to share that. That will likely be to Members today, and that includes communicating this information to the public.
Just for the record, anyone requiring support for themselves or for their loved ones can call the NWT Helpline at 1-800-661-0844, and it has been operational since February 1st, and it operates from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. March 1st it will change.
It’s February 18th today. He mentioned that the new contract takes effect February 1st.
Can I ask the Minister, in the contract layover, how many days was the phone operation not in effect? How many days was there nobody answering the phones at this service?
I did get a briefing this this morning and it’s my understanding that there was no disruption in services.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
That begs to ask the question, why did I receive an e-mail from my questions based in the House the other day that when somebody tried to call there was nobody answering the phone? Not only that, when the phone continues to ring, there’s not even an answering machine to say, you know, nobody’s here to answer your phone, please call this number. There’s not that service, and I have to ask the Minister, what is he going to do to rectify that problem, putting an answering machine on the phone when it’s not being answered?
I’d certainly like the Member to share the details with me so we can make sure that that doesn’t happen again. That isn’t consistent with my understanding. If it was prior to 7:00 a.m. or after 11:00 p.m. they wouldn’t have got a response to their call. As of March 1st we will be going to 24 hours. But with respect to this particular situation, I’d certainly like the Member to come to me and we can sit down and discuss it and see if we can make sure that this doesn’t happen again.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Hawkins.
