Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Health and Social Services. Does the department collect and compile statistics on relapse and recovery? If so, where are these available to the public, and how are they being incorporated into departmental work? Thank you.
Thank you, Member for Great Slave. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. What the department does collect is that people have finished their program. They don't go back to them to determine whether they have relapsed in their program. I will mention, however, that there is a survey that will go out early next year to people who visited the treatment centres to determine what has worked for them and what hasn't worked for them and try and build some best practices out of those responses. Thank you.
When can the public expect the department to create a comprehensive relapse prevention program, and will the Minister commit to providing Members with a plan for the new supports she mentioned earlier, including key performance indicators and timelines?
At this point, we don't have a relapse prevention plan, and I'm not aware that there is work being contemplated for this. A person can relapse for a lot of different reasons. They are not necessarily programmatic, that something was missing in their treatment or after-care. There are a lot of different factors that push people into addiction and pull them out of it. What we're doing is a range of supports that is providing people with after-care, with a way to hold onto their sobriety, but we don't have a relapse prevention plan that is called that.
What is the Department of Health and Social Services doing to reduce wait times for people who are seeking detoxification in order to enter treatment?
What we recognize is that we need a model that is more widely applicable in the NWT outside of the hospitals, to assist people with medical detox. We are working now, the department is working now, on creating a model that will make detox more readily and widely available in the NWT. For some people, of course, that's all they need. They go on without formal treatment, and they are able to achieve sobriety. Of course, for other people, that's a beginning step in a continuum of supports that would allow them to achieve sobriety.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Great Slave.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That's great to hear, that they are developing a model. It would be nice to have a time frame that went along with that. My last question is: will the Minister commit to developing sustainable on-the-land and residential detoxification and treatment centres for addictions and mental health in the North? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I always appreciate the opportunity to plug our on-the-land healing fund. It is $1.8 million annually. It is a very flexible program. People can use it for on-the-land, individuals, after-care, family-based treatment. It is allocated to Indigenous organizations. It is easy to get, and it is very much a community-based program where people can decide on their priorities and how they want them implemented, whether they want to hire staff and so on and so forth. This is on offer to all communities, all Indigenous governments in the NWT, and I encourage them to apply for it. Thank you.
Thank you, Minister. Oral questions. Member for Thebacha.
