Thank you, Madam Speaker. My questions are to the Minister of Health and Social Services. It’s my understanding that the new wellness centre in Norman Wells is going to be started soon, having a territorial long-term care facility there, and the construction is supposed to start sometime this summer and completed by 2016. More importantly, the facility will be staffed with trained health care professionals, and I’m hoping that the Minister can enlighten the House and constituents in the Sahtu on what type of plans are there and put in place to start training these workers and what type of opportunities would the schools, colleges and other institutions have to bring up their grade marks or their required courses to take part in some form of training that’s going to be needed in the health centre and the long-term care facility.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Minister of Health and Social Services, Minister Abernethy.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. The health centre and long-term care facility in Norman Wells are scheduled to begin operations in 2016. We know that there are a significant number of positions that will come along with that facility, and the types of positions include registered nurses, licenced practical nurses, resident care aides, activity coordinators, physiotherapists, dietitians, cooks, cooks helpers, housecleaning, laundry, as well as some admin support, so there are a variety of types of jobs that may be there.
With respect to one of the areas, we know that we need to train some local people on the personal support workers, which basically prepares individuals to be resident care aides or home support workers. We are working closely with authority staff to plan training for the new long-term care facility as well as the health centre ensuring that personal support workers can receive the training appropriate for the work that we need them to do when these new facilities open. The authority has met with a number of representatives from Aurora College in Norman Wells and they have all agreed that for this year what we need to focus on is preparing potential candidates to meet the qualifications for accessing the personal support worker. That work is going on now, and that includes working with Aurora College, community learning centres and the Sahtu Secretariat to encourage potential candidates for the Personal Support Worker program to enrol, and adult education courses so that they’re ready to take the Personal Support Worker program when it is delivered.
The Minister outlined various numbers of positions and requirements to get into these types of health careers.
I want to ask the Minister, is he working closely with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment and any other institutions to get the awareness, the presentations in the high schools? Because the construction will be completed in 2016, preparing our young people, like I said, the potential number of candidates that are going to graduate this year. There are a number of students who are now in post-secondary institutions. This is a facility that’s going to be completed in two years.
Is the Minister working to see if we have almost like a career fair in our schools that the students can now start preparing to take the required courses to get into the program?
The majority of the work, as I indicated previously, has been between the Sahtu Health and Social Services Authority and the Aurora College, and they have been working with individuals in the community to encourage students to develop the qualifications they need to enrol in the Personal Support Worker program. But I hear the Member, and I hear the Member indicating that we need to do a little bit more, because it’s not just personal support worker positions in the community. There will be nursing positions as well as other positions.
What I will commit to now is having somebody from the department talk to Education, Culture and Employment and see what we can do in the school to help the young people recognize the types of jobs that will be coming and how these jobs can offer long-term, meaningful employment in their communities. Some of them are statutory so they obviously require some secondary education, so I will certainly have the department talk with Education, Culture and Employment and work with the Sahtu Health and Social Services Authority and Aurora College.
Given the level of, say, for example, personal support care workers, is there a location that this training possibly could take place given the location in Norman Wells is… I know there’s some complexity about bringing that training to the region. Are there locations that we are looking at so that students then can be prepared potentially, you know, that if they want this type of training these are the locations we’re looking at right now? Nothing yet has been determined.
I don’t believe any agreements have been made necessarily at this point between Aurora College and the Sahtu Health and Social Services Authority where our personal support worker training is going to occur. I do know over the many years that the Personal Support Worker program has been delivered in a number of different communities. I believe at one point it was delivered in Fort Res in cooperation with Yellowknife. I know last year there was a large graduating class out of Yellowknife. I will certainly have those conversations to see if there are any opportunities to deliver it in the region where the work is going to occur.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you. I would also ask the Minister if he would possibly look at the possibility of bringing some of the training to the Sahtu region. I don’t know if that’s to be split. I don’t know if it’s cost-effective, but also we would like see some of the training being done in the Sahtu region on some of these positions that are going to be created with the long-term care facility.
I think that’s what I just said. I think I just said that I would talk to the college to see if there are any opportunities to bring programs like the Personal Support Worker to the region where the work is going to occur. I will need to have those conversations with the Department of Education, Culture and Employment and the Department of Health.
Thank you, Minister Abernethy. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
