Mr. Speaker, earlier I spoke on the need for senior care facilities in communities. My question is to the Minister of Health and Social Services. Can the Minister identify how many residents of Northwest Territories longterm care facilities are living in a community other than their home community? Mahsi.
Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do not have that information at my fingertips. I will commit to getting that information to the Member and committee. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, earlier, the Minister unveiled plans for senior care facilities. Besides that, does the department have a policy to ensure that elders will be able to access long-term care services as close as possible to their home community?
Mr. Speaker, earlier today I talked about the Continuing Care Action Plan. It is a priority of this government to help our elders and our seniors age in place or as close to their homes as possible. There are a number of activities that we are pursuing to provide supports to elders as they age so that they can stay in their homes. If they are unable to stay in their homes for safety situations or concerns, we are hoping to be able to support them through the Housing Corporation and other partners in independent living units in many of our communities throughout the Northwest Territories.
One of our last resorts, Mr. Speaker, is long-term care. Recognizing that long-term care facilities are level 3/4 facilities where individuals cannot live independently, they need full-time, 24/7 care. It has always been this way. Long-term care facilities are located at regional centres. The reason they are in regional centres is because that is where physician positions are located. We need to be able to ensure that the residents of these long-term care facilities are receiving fully competent, safe services in communities where physicians are located. We do not provide long-term care facilities in many of our smaller communities, where we cannot provide that level of safety and care.
Mr. Speaker, how are our elders who have had to leave their homes for long-term care provided with additional support in ways that respect their culture and unique needs? For example, receiving services in their language if they're unilingual, being able to eat traditional foods, and being able to regularly visit with their families.
In many of our facilities where we have commercial kitchens we have had difficulty providing a service of traditional foods, but this is one of the things we are working on in the Department of Health and Social Services, is to find mechanisms to ensure that individuals are getting traditional foods. We are always able to bring traditional foods in and cook them in the shared kitchens as opposed to the commercial kitchens. In many of our facilities we do have interpreters who can provide language services to those who are unilingual, and where they don't we try to make sure that there are other mechanisms.
As far as the ability for our clients or our residents who are living in one of our regional centres to travel back to the communities, it really depends on their acuity, how ill they are or what limitations they have on mobility. One of the reasons many people move to long-term care facilities is they are not capable of mobility or not capable of taking care of themselves.
I can say it happens on a regular basis; we do have people who are able to visit communities for short periods of times with different supports. This is something we have been able to facilitate with the proviso that depends really on the acuity of the patient and whether or not they have mobility capability in any capacity.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Deh Cho.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Recently the Minister tabled the Continuing Care Services Action Plan. Is that plan, the continuing care services, a regional or community action plan? Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, it's a holistic plan focused on helping residents stay in their communities and their homes for as long as possible. That's at the very smallest community to the largest centre. If we have individuals in Yellowknife who want to stay in their homes for as long as possible, this plan is to help support them stay there. If we have residents in some of our smallest communities like Colville Lake or Tsiigehtchic, this plan is intended to help those elders stay in their communities and the regions for as long as possible, until it's not safe for them to do so. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh.
