Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I have questions for the Minister of Health and Social Services. The Minister has been in his office for five years and, before that, was a member of the Standing Committee of Social Programs that undertook a comprehensive review of Child and Family Services. Given the Minister’s clear experience and interest in this file, why has he not made correcting the deficiencies in Child and Family Services his top priority as Minister? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, the Health and Social Services portfolio is a significantly large portfolio, and there are many different competing priorities and demands. The Member is assuming that I haven’t made child and family services a priority. This is an area that has been important to me since before I was an MLA.
When I became the Minister of Health and Social Services, I was deeply disturbed to find out that no progress, zero, had been made on the implementation of the recommendations put forward by the standing committee. I made it a priority to move on all of those recommendations and directed the department at the time to start implementing those recommendations through Building Stronger Families. Building Stronger Families also incorporated the 11 recommendations from the Auditor General at the time, remembering that some of those recommendations actually talk about fixing the foundation and putting in the tools that are necessary to support our employees at the front line.
I heard clearly from residents and heard clearly from staff during those initial reviews that things like our Child and Family Information System was garbage and did not allow them to do their reporting in a way that needed to be done. I have brought forward budget asks on this file to both implement the structured decision-making tools and customize them to the Northwest Territories as well as a budget to bring in Matrix, which is our new information system in Child and Family Services.
That information system came in last year. Already, it has given us the ability to report on things that we have never had the capacity to do so that we can do real-time quality assessments. We are doing those today and providing those results to our front-line staff so they know where there are challenges and they are able to address those challenges immediately as opposed to waiting another year until another audit comes out. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The Auditor General, as my honourable friend from Yellowknife Centre has mentioned, found that these new administrative structures that the Minister has spoken about have not improved service delivery. In fact, these complex changes have turned it into an overburdened system, continues to leave children vulnerable. It sounds like the Minister was personally involved with approving these changes. What has his follow-up been on seeing if they are actually working given what is said in the Auditor General’s report and in the department’s own internal audit report?
In addition to the work we did rolling out Building Stronger Families, we did make significant legislative changes to allow this new delivery of child and family services to become a reality. Building Stronger Families moves us from an apprehension-based system, which has traditionally been the system provided in the Northwest Territories and across Canada, to a system that the people of the Northwest Territories told us they wanted. They wanted a prevention-based system that focused on families while at the same time protecting children.
We made a number of legislative challenges. One of them that we made that, you know, is questionable at this point, even though it was still the right thing to do, is we actually increased our requirement to report. We were having difficulty reporting. We increased our requirement to report because it is the right thing to do. Then, we put in the tools so that they can actually do that reporting. Matrix didn’t come in until last year. The audits that we have done have all been for years prior to that.
We are making a fundamental shift, and we have. This work that we are doing could not be possible without laying the foundation stones, which includes the SDM, Matrix, and the legislation we put forward. When we released Building Stronger Families, I said clearly it is going to take us a couple years to build the foundation. We hadn’t anticipated, at that time, that we would have this kind of response and this difficulty at the front end delivering, but we accept that that was our responsibility.
We did not reach out to our front-line staff and manage the change as effectively as we should have. We have heard from our staff. They have told us that we need to do better. We are doing better by engaging with them and working with them, still a long way to go. A lot of changes are still needed. We are committed to making those changes.
The Minister talked about taking immediate action when he took over this portfolio. He has talked about the May audit. Clearly, these concerns from front-line staff and the totality of concerns are significant and have been present for a long time. When was the Minister first made aware that Child and Family Services was worse off now than it was in 2014?
I think the Member and all Members remember, when we brought forward the audit of the 2015-2016 files, the audit, too, was broke. We ended up having a real problem making some determinations. From that audit, we knew there was something that wasn’t exactly right, but we didn’t understand the magnitude. I directed the department to fix the problem so that we could do a comprehensive audit so we could understand where we were. That audit was completed in May 2017, at which point the department expressed to me and demonstrated the challenges we were facing.
At that time, I immediately directed that we move forward with increasing the number of positions in the upcoming budget, but we started making changes within to add other positions, like the foster management positions. I also directed them to move from a one-year audit process to a more quality-assurance-based system based on the fact that the new tool Matrix allows us to report monthly. We started making these changes immediately, as soon as we became aware. I have been monitoring the progress.
The Auditor General report was happening at the same time. We chose not to wait for the Auditor General’s report to start actioning these items because, at the end of the day, these children only have one opportunity at a childhood. We wanted to make sure that we are addressing these challenges and these concerns immediately once they became obvious.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Kam Lake.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, you know, I am torn with these responses. I appreciate the Minister is working on this. Ultimately, he has had plenty of time to start making progress on this. Things are worse today than they were before. Someone needs to take responsibility for this, Mr. Speaker. Will the Minister take personal responsibility and resign? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
A number of years ago, when we moved Building Stronger Families, I said in the media that we needed to make sure that we hold our staff accountable for this action. This is a plan that needs to be done by the staff of the Northwest Territories. It is sad to say that, when I met with staff in May and again last week to review progress that we have made to date, not one person in that department who was there last week was there when we rolled out Building Stronger Families. We have gone through a complete management change, some because they needed to retire, some because they needed to go. We are making the changes that are necessary. I believe we are on the right path.
I Would Encourage The Member, And I Am Sure He Will: on December 12th, the department will be coming to both committees with the auditor, and they will be walking through our action plan. That just doesn’t demonstrate work we want to do, but it also clearly articulates work that we have done to make these improvements. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
