Thank you, Madam Chair. Just to make sure that all of our staff at the local area are ready to take on the function as of April 1st, there were training sessions conducted in February. We had all the local staff in for training sessions. So it is our hope that between that and ongoing training sessions, that we will be able to have a seamless transfer of all of the responsibilities and moving into the one-stop service centres.
In response to the Member's question about counselling, it is not our intention to start to hire social workers who are trained to counsel people. We are, however, embarking on a collaborative process with Health and Social Services to ensure that we are approaching our clients more on a case management basis. This has been undertaken here for a number of months now on a pilot basis in Yellowknife and is showing very good results. We are very close to meeting to establish the conditions around which that collaboration can take place, so we will have a protocol in place very soon. Then working in conjunction with Health and Social Services we will look to roll that out to other communities in the North.
So, yes, we are moving towards more of a case management process, but it's one that's collaborative. It's not where we're going to try to take on additional functions.