Glen Abernethy

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following document entitled "Avens Adult Day Program Review – Final Summary Report to July 19, 2017." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to recognize two constituents of the Great Slave riding, Brendan Kolson as well as Kiera-Dawn Kolson, one of the award recipients today. Welcome to the gallery.

The department is continuously enhancing and looking for ways to enhance efforts to ensure that we have administrative databases that allow us to monitor program outcomes. We do have the electronic medical records as well as the new Child and Family Services information system that went live last week. With electronic medical records, we have not got it into every community yet, but we are rolling it out, and we are intending to have that done shortly. Those tools will help us collect data that will help this Assembly as well as the department make evidence-based decisions about what is...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, as the Member knows, we do have a relationship with Aurora College and they do provide important training, things like resident care aid training and nursing, but I think the Member is asking about some of the other things that we are exploring. I did have an opportunity to meet with the Dean of Effective Medicine at the University of Alberta to talk about potential opportunities for us to work together in bringing physicians up for residency placements, but also the possibility of having some dental hygienists come up for some practicum placements. We are...

We do invest about $3.8 million annually towards family violence prevention and inter-prevention services in the Northwest Territories; $2.9 million of that goes to the different territorial family violence shelters. Where there aren't family violence shelters in communities or regions, we do have some dollars allocated that we can use to bring those families or those individuals to the regional centres where the family violence shelters do exist. On top of that, we are also contributing about $477,000 to a number of different campaigns to bring awareness and combat family violence in the...

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I will have talk to the department to get the specifics on that detail. I am not exactly sure when those will be ready. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, that is actually part of the oral health strategy that we are working on, training our local people to do some of that work, especially some of our existing staff, whether it is community health reps or community health nurses. I indicated previously I did have an opportunity to meet with the dean of the medical program at the U of A, and we did have some conversation about whether or not there is an opportunity for some of their dental hygienist students to possibly come to the Northwest Territories, in particular to small, rural, remote communities to do...

Since the program was discontinued at the University of Saskatoon, like I said, we no longer have a supply of the individuals with the appropriate training to fill the role of the dental therapists. In investigating the role of the dental therapists and looking at providing better quality oral health for residents of the Northwest Territories, what became clear is that dental therapists were a school-based position. There was a gap that we were missing, and that was the youth or the children from zero to five were not getting support from the dental therapist positions, which were primarily...

I will certainly commit to keeping the Member up to date on where we are with progress on moving into that building. With respect to the last question, all placements in the Northwest Territories are determined through the Territorial Admission Committee. Residents of the Sahtu who are now living in other communities, whether it's in the Beaufort Delta or Yellowknife or Hay River or Fort Simpson, if they are interested in returning back to Norman Wells when the new facility opens, they should be getting in touch with the staff of the facilities they are in and looking to apply through...

The job descriptions for the new facility have been written. We have experienced some delays getting them through job evaluation, but most of that is completed at this point. We are doing some anticipatory hiring. Advertisements have been posted for resident care aides, which was one of the new positions that is coming to the region. We are starting to roll out some of our staffing actions now in anticipation of opening that facility.