Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Madam Chair. The department is considering adopting a series of tools called structured decision-making. These are standardized forms which child protection workers can complete in order to assess both the immediate safety risk and longer-term risk and future harm.

Several Canadian jurisdictions recently adopted these tools, and the director of territorial services is in touch with his counterparts to receive guidance on lessons learned in other jurisdictions. One of the first lessons that was learned is that it will take several years to adapt the tools to our particular...

Mr. Speaker, within the action plan, a number of the activities actually require departments to work together: Health and Social Services; Education, Culture and Employment; but not just the government departments but organizations that are providing services to residents, like the NWT Council for Persons with Disabilities and organizations like the Yellowknife Association for Community Living. Within the action plan, it identifies clearly who’s working on what initiatives, and I’d be happy to provide Members an update of where we are on that action plan today, a status report. Thank you, Mr...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With respect to immediately taking some actions, I agree with recommendation number seven. To that end, I’ve already committed to developing a new accountability framework for child and family service programs, which will be done in July.

In addition to that, steps have already been taken to appoint CEOs as assistant directors under the act, and new, more rigorous quarterly reporting requirements will take effect in the fall. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There has been a lot of conversation about medical travel in the House over the last couple of months. We do support some individuals having escorts with them who can help them with all those types of things that the Member is bringing up.

If a resident of the Northwest Territories travels to Edmonton, we also have some professionals located in Edmonton, nurses who could provide some guidance and support to individuals and help them understand how to navigate. Those individuals are available to our residents if they need them. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. With respect to building the stronger linkages with Aboriginal government, we agree, and to that end we will be looking to add child and family services to our agendas for government-to-government meetings with the Aboriginal governments and we will ensure that there is appropriate follow-up at the staff level.

There are a wide range of degrees of hearing loss that children may experience. Regardless of the hearing loss identified, rehabilitation services are provided. So hearing aid prescriptions and other types of things, fitting. There’s also speech-language pathology which is available and will help individuals who have some degree of hearing loss. So there are programs available to youth, children and babies in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The action plan will focus on building stronger families. In this role of the family preservation worker with the intervention support programs and other things that they do, those types of things will be of key importance.

Obviously, we need to do more work to determine to the extent to which we can change either the focus of existing positions, or in the future whether or not we may require new positions. This work will actually be coordinated as part of our caseload analysis. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. A universal newborn hearing screening program was introduced as part of the GNWT’s Early Childhood Development Action Plan, 2001-2004. Stanton, the audiology department there has been delivering the universal newborn hearing screening program since June 2004, which is called the IHP, or the Infant Hearing Program.

This program is delivered at all birthing centres in the Northwest Territories and aims to identify infants with permanent hearing loss by the time they’re three months old and provide the necessary services to support communication development by the time they...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We’re actually on track to finalize an action plan, and the action plan will include outstanding items from the department’s response to the 16th Legislative Assembly Standing Committee on Social Programs report commitments made in response to the March 2014 Auditor General’s report and longer term actions designed to bring about fundamental change in how we support families. We had committed to finalizing an action plan in June, and we are reviewing the recommendations in this Standing Committee on Government Operations’ report and we want to ensure that all...

Mr. Speaker, the Department of Health and Social Services and Yellowknife Health and Social Services aren’t in this alone. We do have a relationship with the City of Yellowknife who has, to date, contributed $50,000 per fiscal year. On top of that $50,000, the health and social services system here in the Northwest Territories contributes an additional $250,000, $175,000 from the mental health and addictions budget and $75,000 from the anti-poverty budget. So, combined with the city, there’s a $300,000 budget to operate this facility. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.