Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The questions, again, are for the Minister of health. I want to talk about: when we talk about extended care, we have a couple of people in there who are probably younger than 50 or younger than 60. In Hay River, we do have an independent or an assisted-living facility there, but the problem is that, to get in there, you have to wait two or three or four years. Has the department, in looking at the needs on the extended-care side, considered the shortcomings on the assisted-living side? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member for Hay River South. Minister of Health and Social Services.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There are, according to my notes, two people under 60 who live at Woodland Manor, so it's two out of 23. I don't believe that the people who live in the assisted-living facilities' needs have specifically been taken into account in the long-term care. The long-term care is really about institutional care for elders who require high levels of nursing care on a day-to-day, 24-7 basis. Having said that, there is now a supported living review going on, the department has an RFP out to choose a contractor to do that, so that we can look at how we can, first of all, repatriate people who are in out-of-territory placements and, secondly, how we can increase capacity in the NWT for people who need assisted living who are not also elderly. Thank you.
In Hay River, we've got the 10 new beds that they built a few years ago, and we have 15 existing that were in Woodland Manor. My concern is that, by putting in 24 versus 48, I'm not sure what's going to happen to Woodland Manor, and my concern is that they may do what they're doing with the old hospital and knock it down. I haven't really heard of any plans to turn it into anything else at this point. One area that we're really deficient on in our extended care in Woodland Manor is a place for dementia patients. We probably have several there right now, and I don't think they have the support they require. I would ask the Minister: has that been taken into consideration when you looked at the extended-care facility?
According to my information, nine of 23 clients at Woodland Manor have dementia, and I certainly do recognize that residents with dementia need additional care. We don't want them to roam or leave or hurt themselves or be lost. It's my understanding that all of the new builds for long-term care centres take into account dementia as a diagnosis and they are constructed to keep dementia patients safe, so that is a consideration in all of the long-term care builds. As things stand now, we only have a long-term care facility here in Yellowknife. We recognize that, going forward, people want their family members to be at home, so it makes more sense to do it the other way, where all centres are for dementia patients, rather than having only a specialized centre in Yellowknife.
One of the issues that come up, as well, is that, when you have an elderly couple and one has to go into extended care, the spouse may be required to live elsewhere, and we separate them. Has there been any consideration by the department at looking at putting smaller independent-living units on the site where extended-care Woodland Manor in Hay River currently is, to allow for couples to be together and grow old together? Recently, we had a couple who had to move out-of-territory, someone who was born and raised here, even though they wanted to stay here. It's sad to see that, so I'm just wondering if the department has used that as a consideration, as well.
I'm not sure if the department has specifically considered that scenario. If it's independent living, it sounds like this would be part of the Housing Corporation's offerings for seniors' housing. Obviously, it would be our intention to keep couples together. They should be together at the end of their lives, as they have been through their lives, and so we would want that to happen. However, how that is going to look in long-term care, I'm not really sure how that's going to look, whether there will be suites available to accommodate couples rather than rooms for single people.
Thank you, Minister. Final supplementary. Member for Hay River South.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would ask the Minister if there have been any preliminary designs for either a 48- or a 24-bed for Hay River, because I look at the cost of a 48-bed, which would probably be less than doing two 24s. This whole exercise is going to end up costing more money to this government if we split that building. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
The issues we're talking about here go beyond budgets and money. Aging in place is what most seniors want for themselves. They want to stay in their home. They want to have services that come to them from the community, whether it's a nurse or a personal support worker or a family member, and they want these people to assist them to remain independent for as long as possible. That's really the future for elders in the Northwest Territories and in the country as a whole. Long-term care has turned out to be a disaster in southern Canada. It has turned out to be a place where way too many people have died because of poor or no standards, poor regulation, issues around having people work in multiple places for very low wages. We are fortunate here in the sense that the government offers long-term care and so there is accountability. There isn't a need to make a profit. We can accommodate people where they are.
What I want to say to the Member is that, if there are sketches and cost assessments, I'm not aware of them, and if there are those, they would be out of date. The costs and estimates would be out of date. I'm not aware of anything new going on here, but I would really like the Member to turn his mind to the benefits of aging in place, which we recognized by putting it into our mandate and which most people prefer to being in an institutional setting. Thank you.
