Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Krutko, do you agree to stand down your motion while we get it translated? Mr. Krutko.
Debates of Feb. 24th, 1998
This is page numbers 1041 - 1091 of the Hansard for the 13th Assembly, 5th Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was chairperson.
Topics
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Michael Miltenberger Thebacha
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was wondering if the Minister could indicate the status of the Adoption Act and when we can anticipate that being brought into the House so we can get that last component cleared off our legislative schedule? Thank you.
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Kelvin Ng Kitikmeot
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the intent is to get it to Cabinet tomorrow and bring it to the House for first and second readings, I believe, on Thursday and to deal with it in the normal fashion.
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Michael Miltenberger Thebacha
Thank you. Could the Minister also indicate, at some point, the status of the Child Welfare Information System that I recollect seems to have been discussed at some point in the past and the status of that particular information system that was going to computerize all the statistics and data that are out there, a lot of it which is done manually through hard copy? Thank you.
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Ramsden
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Child Welfare Information System has not made great progress. We ran a pilot in Yellowknife of the Alberta system. It proved, for the social workers, to be quite cumbersome and difficult to use. Our view, based on proposals we received, is that it would cost something in the order of a million dollars to make refinements to it that the workers had suggested and also to convert it or embrace our new legislation. Subsequent to that, people from the boards and people from our department have had discussions and framed up the proposal for a much more straightforward system. It is our view that we will go out and do a proposal caller on the design of a much more basic system. It is quite a leap to go from the current method of storing and using the data to what was proposed or envisioned by that Alberta system because we want to take a more humble approach. Thank you.
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Michael Miltenberger Thebacha
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Could the deputy minister indicate then, how he would characterize the current state of information with child welfare? Would he consider it adequate, for instance, if I asked him how many kids are in foster care, how many group homes, how many temporary wards, permanent wards and adoptions, he had in the department? Would those be figures that could be obtained relatively easily and would they be relatively accurate and up to date? Thank you.
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Ramsden
There are a variety of issues there. We have spent some time in each of the offices of boards getting to the point where at least their information is current. It is clear, at least in my view, that the information is manual and accuracy became critical. We needed to know that, in fact, there was an accurate data set. We cannot summarize it on a territorial basis easily or quickly at this point, but I have got a greater comfort level that we have an accurate view today that I did a year ago. But we have a long way to go before we can actually pull that information out and use it on a pan-territorial or pan-board basis. Thank you.
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Michael Miltenberger Thebacha
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This speaks to the issue, I suppose, of the coordinating role of headquarters and I suppose is almost an impossible situation you may place your superintendent of child welfare in who is legally responsible for all these children in care when, if asked, from what you are telling me, you would not be able say very immediately or accurately how many children you did have in care in any number of wardships or arrangements? When you say you have improved from last year to this year, you take a great deal of comfort in that, exactly how bad was it last year?
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Ramsden
In my view, from the days of yore until a year ago, I do not think we have come very far in terms of knowing whom we had in our guardianship. In the process of going through files, we found some things that were tremendously upsetting and tremendously unacceptable to us. As I say, we have been working hard board-by-board and very much on a pay per basis at this point, to make matters right for each of the children who are in our care, to improve the records around them and to improve the issues, the care management plan around them. What we need to do in the next steps is to create a way to test that data, to have access to it inside our offices from very board, but we need a way to support both field workers and the superintendent to do updates on files or to do file monitoring around agreements and court appearances. We have a tremendous amount of work to do to automate that whole area. Thank you.
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1083
Michael Miltenberger Thebacha
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a question related to division, which is about 400 days away. Is this particular system, given the state it is in, will we be able to, upon April 1, 1999, east and west, still be able to know fairly clearly what the status is in terms of child welfare issues at a territorial level so that the new legislatures will have a certain amount of comfort that children have not fallen through the
cracks or maybe in jurisdictions they are unaware of or any surprises of that nature? Thank you.
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1084
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1084
Ramsden
Mr. Chairman, first of all, we need to be in that position. The reason why we broke off on the developmental work around the Alberta system is, we did not believe we could get staff comfortable with it, get it changed and done it in time for division. It is our view that we can actually have an established pilot and have it tested and in place, prior to the introduction of the new Family Law, which will give us some opportunity prior to division to work on that.
In the area of information management, it is also, perhaps, one of the areas of most significant cooperation between the Interim Commissioner's office and ourselves because we realize we need to be in a position to very seamlessly hand off our information management systems. There has been some willingness to allow for some overlap in that area, so that, in fact, we do not cause a loss of understanding or a loss of data around residents, whether they are eastern or western residents. Thank you.
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1084
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1084
Michael Miltenberger Thebacha
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Would it be possible to provide the vacancy rate of social workers by region? One of their fundamental or primary responsibilities is, of course, administration, provision of child protection services, through the whole spectrum of need.
Committee Motion 22-13(5): To Identify The Amount Of Federal Funding For Western NWT Aboriginal Health Care
Item 19: Consideration In Committee Of The Whole Of Bills And Other Matters
Page 1084