Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier on I spoke about partnerships on suicide prevention, and my questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. Mr. Speaker, a patient's ability to control their privacy during their engagement with the healthcare system is critical to their treatment and ongoing healing and wellness. The Action Plan on Child and Youth Mental Wellness commits the department to developing standards of practice for children and youth privacy. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell us a bit more about this work? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, during the development of the action plan the Member has referenced, and we actually engaged with youth from across the Northwest Territories, and they made it very clear that privacy is of particular interest and importance to them. Youth have been very vocal about the fact that they do not feel that their privacy is always respected when using the healthcare system, so ensuring proper protection and rights of privacy and confidentiality is an extremely important part of the work that the health and social services system is doing. We want to make certain that our system in the Northwest Territories is set up with standards of practice to ensure that youth feel safe in seeking healthcare, regardless of where they go in the Northwest Territories.
In 2017-2018, the Department of Health and Social Services has been working to research the current legal context and the best practices around privacy, confidentiality, and legal rights of children and youth, related to mental wellness. This work has included consultation with the chief health privacy officer. They are doing a jurisdictional scan as well as examining connections to professional standards and codes of conduct from many jurisdictions across the country. In 2018-2019, the department will work to develop the standards of practice that will guide Health and Social Services systems staff respecting and protecting the rights of youth to privacy and confidentiality. This work will all be followed by training for staff across the Northwest Territories.
That is valuable information for youth to reach out. Mr. Speaker, the action plan also speaks of reviewing the out-of-territory program that is a program that sees children and youth leaving the territory for specialized care. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister tell us more about the scope of this review, including how it will interact with the need to establish reliable care options in people's home communities.
Mr. Speaker, we heard from youth that our programs and services need to be flexible and they need to be adaptive to their needs, to the children's needs. Initial work to prepare for review has already taken place. This work is focused on determining the best scope and outcomes for the review. It is anticipated that the review will include an examination of the needs of youth, including health and mental health needs, behaviours of concern, trauma, supervision needs, education, employment, housing, social supports, and any others that are deemed important. The review will also include an examination of the strength of children and youth, including mental wellness, social supports, physical activity, and in connection to culture, which we have heard over and over again is incredibly important.
In addition, the review will look at staffing models at facilities and the full spectrum of programs and services that children and youth need to access to support their individual needs. We are using a recovery-oriented approach to care and recognizing that youth needs change over time, and we know that it is essential that a full spectrum of services is available and accessible to children in order for them to basically have the best outcomes and the best potential future. Mr. Speaker, we need to have a better understanding of the evolving and complex needs of children and youth served both in the territory but also in facilities that we are supporting outside of the territories, and that is the work that we are doing now.
I appreciate the response. Mr. Speaker, the action plan's objectives include creating a supportive environment to protect the mental wellness of children and youth and improving mental wellness programs and services through locally relevant data and perspectives. Mr. Speaker, how will the future of the territorial suicide and crisis support network reflect the need for community-based programming like Project CREATeS or the GNWT sharing circles?
The crisis response network is one thing, and the supports that we are providing at a community, territorial, and regional level, they interrelate, but they have a different role. The suicide prevention and crisis response network will take a whole-community approach, involving relevant community partners who are figuring out who is in the community, who can be part of that network, and will focus on prevention, intervention, but also look at responses after an incident has occurred. The work will also include supporting community-level plans that can be developed to meet the needs of individual communities, recognizing that the communities have a lot of great ideas and they know their communities better than somebody sitting in Yellowknife or even a regional centre might, so it's critical that we get their involvement in the design to a community response. The programs that the Member has mentioned, I am not familiar with the CREATeS program, but I am certainly willing to have a sit-down with the Member so he can help me get educated on that, and then we can have a conversation with the department about how that might be something we can look at, if appropriate, in the Northwest Territories. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Hay River North.
