Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Following up on my Member’s statement, keeping children with their families is the best way to support and build stronger families, the ultimate goal of child and family services. We need to work with families right when they are struggling, and apprehension needs to be a last resort. Increasing financial support to grandparents to enable care for their grandchild is an appropriate policy goal.
How will the Minister direct the department to reach out to grandparents caring for children not their own, to make it easier for them to accept help? Mahsi.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As the Member indicated, we’re making fundamental changes to the way we provide child and family services here in the Northwest Territories with a focus on the family. Our goal is to keep children with their parents. Raising children is, first and foremost, a family responsibility. I understand when individuals are having difficulty, they often turn to their parents or their siblings or other family members.
If a child enters the system, whether it’s through a voluntary means or whether it’s through an apprehensive means, we do try to engage families to keep their children in a tight knit, and we do have extended family foster placements. We are changing the way we do business. We are trying to create a more supportive environment, and that includes extended families. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thanks to the Minister. When young parents have problems and grandparents fill the gap, often informally, sparing their grandchildren the trauma of apprehension and interaction by child and family services, this often brings a financial burden beyond their capacity.
Will the Minister immediately and specifically begin a process of non-adversarial outreach to grandparents who are fostering informally, to begin recognizing and meeting their needs? There are lots out there. Mahsi.
Where there’s no involvement of the child and family services of the requirements under the act for engagements, grandparents are, absolutely, free to welcome their grandchildren into their home, but the GNWT is not responsible for the financial costs of those individuals coming in unless the child and family services has been engaged.
If grandparents choose to take a child into their care and they do run into financial difficulties, as the Member indicated, they are available to go to income support if they are having financial challenges as a result of bringing those children in.
We are modifying the way we provide child and family services here in the Northwest Territories with a focus on the families. Our goal is to keep them with the parents or extended families as much as possible, and that’s the direction we’ll be taking.
Thanks to the Minister. Obviously, we know the policy and it’s not working. I’m asking the Minister to do some outreach and make sure that the grandparents know what options are available to them. Just saying that this is available to them does not do the job. Some grandparents who are fostering grandchildren informally have incomes that disqualify them from receiving support either financially or for housing issues that arise as a result of the unplanned expansion of their families, consideration needs to be given to revising voluntary agreements so struggling grandparents more easily qualify for support. Will the Minister commit to exploring alternate revenue streams for these grandparents who have fixed incomes above the threshold for help?
Not all grandparents who take children are going to run into financial difficulties, but where they do run into financial difficulties they are able to go to the Department of Education, Culture and Employment and income support. We do recognize that addressing the issue that the Member is talking about, those individuals who have not gone to child and family services but are taking care of their grandchildren and they do need some supports, it’s going to take an interdepartmental approach involving integrated case management. It’s going to take a number of departments, because the issues are crossing a number of departments, Education, Culture and Employment and income support, the NWT Housing Corporation with public housing, as well as the Department of Health and Social Services under child protection.
The department’s position has been that when the director decides to place an at-risk child with their grandparents, the grandparents do receive foster care payments. They do get money. However, the department does not pay for foster care payments when the decision to place a child with their grandparent was actually the family’s decision. They never came to child and family services. The department has always been working collaboratively with other departments to resolve complex matters requiring an integrated approach. A fully integrated approach is somewhat challenged by the NWT Housing Corporation policy that considers foster care payments as income when calculating eligibility for public housing, and Revenue Canada does not consider foster care payments as income for tax purposes. We are discussing these between the three departments, trying to find resolution and trying to break down the silos and the barriers to support our families here in the Northwest Territories. We are doing a number of things to find a way.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Minister’s comments on the interdepartmental confusion which clearly is a barrier to grandparents accessing the support they need. Currently, ECE is the route for grandparents who are informally fostering grandchildren to receive financial support through income assistance while apprehended children are the responsibility of Health and Social Services. I appreciate the Minister’s look here, but I ask the Minister to hark back to when he was part of a group of MLAs that revised child and family services and highlighted the needs to support grandparents who are fostering informally. I’m glad to hear the department’s position of things. We know that, and we know it’s failing our grandparents who are informally fostering. Now I’m asking the Minister to step out of that and hark back to the conservation we’ve had with real people and think about how we can come up with new ways to address this real issue.
I support the extended family fosters. I support grandparents becoming foster parents when there is a risk of abuse or neglect within a family. But there are situations where families are making choices regardless of whether there’s risk of neglect or abuse. I want to find ways to support and we are working, but we do need to be cautious. Paying some grandparents to look after grandchildren when there is no risk of abuse or neglect would open the door for all grandparents to expect payment when they agree to look after their grandchildren. We need to ensure that we’re focusing on grandparents who are in financial need or difficulty, and the integrated approach that I talked to trying to break down the barriers to find support will provide those grandparents who are in financial difficulty, but still taking on children, some opportunities. In the meantime, if there is an issue of finances and they do want some money, they can come to the Department of Health and Social Services and actually fully engage within the child and family services division in a voluntary capacity and receive foster support. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Blake.
