Mr. Speaker, it took nearly a decade for the Government of the Northwest Territories to assess the services it provides to persons with disabilities, only to reveal significant failures in their design and delivery. Yet almost four years after this work accumulated in health and social services' landmark supported living review final report, only a handful of its 33 key recommendations have been meaningfully implemented.
Once you speak to families affected by these systemic failures, you will notice that these are not just service gaps but service canyons - fragmented disability and continuing care programs, limited cross-departmental coordination, and inadequate mechanisms to respond to unique or complex circumstances force caregivers to fill operational and staffing shortfalls in GNWT service delivery, simply to ensure that adults with disabilities receive the care they need. Addressing these systemic failures are the very foundation of the final report.
Life for caregivers should not be this difficult, Mr. Speaker. In particular, I have witnessed the shock families experience when their disabled children age out of child and family services. Suddenly, they are cut off from support and left at the mercy of the income-assistant model, which is far from adequate given the rising cost of living. NGO supports exist, but these are often tied to employment, a requirement people with more profound disabilities simply cannot meet.
One recommendation with the greatest potential to support caregivers is expanding the supported living model to private homes, opening access to supports, respite, and paid caregiving resources that are currently eliminated to designated providers. The closest progress towards this goal was the paid family community caregiver pilot project which was successfully introduced before the final report but cut shortly afterwards.
This Minister knows that people want to stay in loving homes, and those homes want to stay whole. People with disabilities are not a burden. The burden lies with a government that fails to deliver the services they need. Now the Minister must answer what the families are asking. Why, years after the release of the final report, has there been no meaningful or measurable progress in addressing the gaps in access, coordination, and accommodation for adults with disabilities and their families? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Range Lake. Members' statements. Member from Yellowknife North.
