Glen Abernethy

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As a government, as a Legislature we’ve already made prevention and early intervention a priority with a number of actions in both the Early Childhood Development Action Plan and the Addictions and Mental Health Action Plan. As a part of our new action plan for building stronger families that I’d mentioned in the previous motion, we’ll look at more actions focused on family preservation. We will introduce public reporting on key system-wide performance measures over the next couple of months and these will also include several measures related directly to the child and...

Mr. Speaker, we’ll have a better idea what the costs will be and how far $300,000 will go once we’ve actually completed the review. As I’ve said, the provider who has helped us out for the last two months – the NWT Disabilities Council – has pulled together some really good information that’s going to help us inform the way we move forward and as far as what the design will look like and what types of services, if any, are provided in that facility. At that time I’d be happy to come to committee and the public with that information so everybody knows what we’re talking about. But until that...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We appreciate the concerns that are raised with respect to the Medical Travel Policy and there’s no question that the Medical Travel Policy needs to be reviewed. In fact, we are currently doing that. One of the areas that we are looking at is the per diem rates that we provide to residents of the Northwest Territories who happen to be on medical travel. But there are many different situations when an individual may be eligible for per diem and may not be eligible for per diem. For instance, if an individual goes south for an extended stay, we try to get them into one of...

I would encourage the grandparents, obviously, to talk to social services to see how they can engage with the system, but it does come back to the parents who have the legal responsibility for those children. They would have to be involved as well. History would have to be determined; a file would have to be created. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, just for clarity, raising children is, first and foremost, a responsibility of the family. Parents have the right to make decisions about where their children live, but the GNWT is not necessarily responsible for paying for those decisions. The only time the GNWT would actually become involved is if a family has some financial challenges, is living in poverty, and we would provide income support. Families can make the decision to have children stay with one group and then apply for income support.

When health and social services becomes involved, the only time we can actually...

Mr. Speaker, June 1st is National Cancer Survivors Day. This day is an annual celebration of life and loved ones. Each year it reminds us of the importance of speaking openly about cancer and supporting one another in the face of such a serious disease.

On average, 111 new cases of cancer are diagnosed in the NWT every year. There is life after diagnosis. The NWT residents I know who have cancer have shown courage and strength in their individual cancer journeys.

Too often we think that the diagnosis of cancer is a reason for despair, but more people are surviving and going on to live full...

Mr. Speaker, we have a certain number of staff in the department who are doing a large amount of work, and more and more priorities are coming at them on a regular basis. We have seen clearly that we are capped with resources, and I want this work to be done and I want it to be done as quickly as possible, but we often go out and seek additional resources to help with the reviews and analysis and there are people who can help us do this in a timely manner, so this isn’t unusual, but given the timelines, we want to make sure that we get this done. I feel it’s important to expedite the section...

We are making progress with the wellness court and we are hopeful and actually anticipate that anticipation of the wellness courts later this year will help the courts better address these exact situations by providing supports. As far as expediting, we have a plan in place to start rolling out the wellness court in the fall and we would be ready to start providing those services then.

In the meantime, if there are individual cases that Members are aware of, Justice and Health and Social Services are always willing to work together to try to find solutions in the interim. Thank you, Mr. Speaker...

Cognitive behavioral assessments for adults are completed by psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists upon referral from a physician, community health nurse or a community social worker. In the Northwest Territories, we use the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Canadian guidelines for diagnosis, which were developed in 2005. There are a significant number of supports that individuals with FASD can access within the Government of the Northwest Territories. So I would say we are far from not caring for these individuals. We are not stacking against them. We have social workers who can deal one...

I commit to getting that information for the Member. As far as providing BiliBlankets in the additional communities, we need to figure out what the rate of prevalence of this particular condition is and figure out the cost balance analysis. Thank you.