Thank you. On page 36 and 37 coming up, under children's services, Mr. Chairman, I just want to ask the Minister about the foster care services. At the women leaders' conference over the weekend, one of the topics that came up was about the issue of having too many of our aboriginal children having to leave small communities to be placed elsewhere. We had a retired social worker there from one of the very small communities where currently there is no social worker. We also are aware of...

Thank you. Right now, we are presently on page 6-35.

Activity summary, community health programs, operations expenditure summary, $69.187 million.

We will now turn to page 6-36. Page 6-37, activity summary, community health programs, grants and contributions, contributions. Ms. Lee.

Okay. Thank you. On page 6-37 then, under children's services, the government provides money for foster care, residential care, protective services. As I was saying, I learned, in talking to...Obviously the issue of foster care and having to have some of our children in foster care is a big issue and I had the occasion to talk to a retired social worker from a very small community in our territory where there is no social worker right now. She used to be a foster parent for some of the children in the communities and she's been asked to foster in the community that she lives in. She brought up a couple of things. One is that in her understanding, the legislation requires or provides for an opportunity for the community leadership to get together to have a discussion about the welfare of the child or the children who are subject to

apprehension and try to find ways to find suitable families within their communities, so that there is a possibility for those children to stay within the community.

She's saying that that doesn't always happen. In fact, she is not aware of an event like that happening in a long while. I do appreciate foster parents. I think it's a very difficult job and there are a lot of parents in Yellowknife doing that, but I am sure everyone would be supportive of finding ways to keep foster children within their own communities, cultures, families and regions if at all possible. What kind of system is in place to make sure that you could ascertain that that step takes place? Could we make it so it's a very strong, almost mandatory requirement -- it should be documented almost -- that each community has a committee set up where they have to look at each situation and see?

The second thing is we need to support the families who may be in position to take these children in care.

The third thing is she is saying that the requirements to be a foster parent now has changed a lot since she was a foster parent 10 or 20 years ago. I don't know if it's a question of education or support or whatever, but I would like to know more information on that. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Roland.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the area of the children's services and especially the foster care side of where we try to help families and children that are in need, within the legislation there is a plan of care committees that's in there, but the legislation itself is permissible so it's not mandatory. A concern of trying to make it mandatory is if we can't get the committee together to make decisions, then the child is in limbo even longer. So that is one of the reasons why. But we have in the past; we've made aboriginal organizations and other organizations within communities aware of the plan of care committees that can be established. Right now, we are working with organizations and families on some of the planning and training that needs to occur in that area of foster care and parenting on that side.

The issue of requirements of who could qualify as a foster parent has, indeed, over the years become much more stringent. A lot of that is around the liability issues. As any child that goes into foster care is basically a ward of the department, we have to ensure the safety side of it. So that's why you see those standards or the requirements become much more stringent. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Ms. Lee.

Thank you. I don't take any issue with having stringent requirements and the need for the government to act on behalf of the children. I'm speaking about the fact that especially in small traditional communities, they're very strong families and people know who they are, too. Maybe even if they're strong families, they don't want to...I mean taking care of other children is part of the culture. I'm just wondering if there's anything more this government can do to identify those families and provide support. I'm not in any way suggesting that we don't enforce those requirements, but there's always room to work better in that regard.

Another one I want to say is that I am aware of the fact that this is an issue that's as sensitive as caribou. All our community leaders are very protective of their children and they may not want to work with...I don't know; there's jurisdiction questions and such. I just want to say, as I said about the caribou issue where a lot of what we do here is intergovernmental matters, not just wildlife but for children too. We have self-governments and we have aboriginal governments and we're a public government, and I think often we spend too much time talking about how to get intergovernmental relations working for the benefit of getting resources on diamonds or the pipeline or whatever. But I don't think our leaders of different governments are talking enough about how we could work together to find the process and to make policies or make decisions for the benefit of our children, and find ways to keep our children in the community wherever possible.

This community that this lady was from, there is no social worker now. Given that we can't even start a Social Work Program at Aurora College because of lack of interest right now, that problem is not going to go away. We have to find a way for the government to see what we can do with that. I would like to just see issues like that be on the agenda of the government's actions on the intergovernmental front, not just the big ticket items of big things that it's nice to talk about, but we try to do the big ticket items so that we can take care of the small and vital issues, too. So I'd like to ask the Minister if he could review his department's work on where we are. Identify where there is no social worker in place or, I don't know what I could ask him to do, but I would hate to see us just accepting as a fact that there are just some communities that are never going to keep their children in need and that we're just going to have a hands-off policy. I'm willing to hear the Minister talk about how we could address this. At minimum, we should have in every community where children are in danger that there's a group of people working together to see what they can do for those children before they're having to be shipped away. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, there's also, I guess, a number of concerns that were raised. There's the other side of the program where individuals or communities or family members think that Health and Social Services are too involved, we're there to take the children away. That's something that I've had to deal with, as well. The fact is, we're a situation where it's not hands-off. We're involved, we're trying to do as much as we can to ensure that the safety of children is being met. There's recruitment out there for trying to get more foster families registered. Where we have communities that, for one reason or another, don't have a social worker, they have social workers travel in and help that way as well as regular communications that can be done with the regional office or the department itself.

Fostering is important. It's one of our highest priorities and we've been working on a proposal. The framework is in place of trying to address the issue of foster parents. For example, the rates of pay. Should it be standardized? What's included? Right now, there's a lot of issues that are up for one's interpretation of how a program can be applied, so we see different rates for children in care across the territory. So we're working on that piece of it and seeing what we can do, but it something that is high

on our list of priorities of how we deal with children in need and in care.

As a relationship with aboriginal organizations and aboriginal governments, it's one thing we've worked with. In fact, our last piece of legislation that we worked with, we went to great lengths to work with the aboriginal governments and organizations to ensure that the issues they were raising were being addressed, and that was one of keeping children in their own communities with their own families to the best we can. Ultimately it comes down to if we can get more people in line to step up and help out when it comes to the fostering portion. As I stated, we're working on a plan to help that along and help resource it at a better level. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Next I have Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On the subject of foster care, following up on that, when is the last time that the rates for foster care were adjusted upwards in the Northwest Territories? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Minister.

I believe the last time rates were adjusted was around 2001, but we'd have to confirm that.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The last time I talked to some foster parents here in Yellowknife, the rates were still sitting around $24 a day for a child that did not have any special needs. Might I suggest, for the record today, that that is not enough money. When you consider how much it costs to feed a child and the cost of living in the North and everything else, I just don't think that that's adequate. I think that that goes contrary to the priority that we put on children who are in care. I think that monetary figure right there says a lot, and it doesn't say a lot of good.

I have some constituents in my riding; I'll give you a scenario. A fairly young grandmother with a grandchild, the mother of the child troubled and quite often requiring intervention on the part of the grandmother to care for the child. No remuneration available. But when it comes down to choices between staying home and a grandchild and going to their place of employment where they're gainfully employed, then they would be forced to give up their employment basically to take care of their grandchild. Now, I have a problem with extended family or grandparents not being the first line of consideration if they're appropriate. Now, we know there's been some really bad incidents that have occurred even in extended families. There have been some issues that have drawn national attention. But where the grandparents would qualify to be foster parents and would be good foster parents, I think that they should be the first choice and I don't think they should necessarily have to do it for nothing, especially in the case where the grandparent may be a single parent as well and does not have another household income to fall back on.

Right now this is how it goes: they feel that their grandchild is at risk because of activities, attention or lack of attention that the grandchild is getting. They intervene. In order to get Social Services involved, they basically have to forfeit the care of that grandchild. That's a very hard thing for a grandparent to do, to say, oh, could you please go by my grown son or daughter's house and pick up their child because they're partying and I feel my grandchild is in an unsafe and compromised position? That's a hard phone call to make. I'll tell you, when Social Services apprehends the child, that child doesn't get placed necessarily with a family member, it could be people who are complete strangers in the community and it just creates all kinds of problems. I'd like to get the Minister's response to the concept of relatives and families actually being compensated for taking care of even their grandchildren. I mean it's a much better solution than putting them with an absolute stranger. To be honest, sometimes grandparents do have to give up their livelihood in order to do that, in order to fulfil that role. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, something I've said and stood by as long as I've been a Member of the Assembly is I believe strong families lead to strong communities which lead to a strong territory, and it's families that will make a difference. When we have healthy communities, we have healthy families. We see the reverse in situations. So it's something we have to address, and we have been through this framework we're coming out with, to try and address, as mentioned, the last change in the way benefits were paid or help was given to those who were in the foster care world I guess is one thing that we're seeing and are going to work to try and address.

The particular issue of families involved, yes, we like to have families stay with family members. Ultimately that was the way it worked years ago, was when family members became in trouble, other family members took up the task. For example, when we talk about custom adoption in the North, that was an example of how families stepped up and just took over situations when the need arose.

The issue of when a call is made about the safety of a child, the act is very, very strong in that area of a child's safety. For us to step in, it requires that call of concern, then we would step in fairly strongly and try to make sure the child is, indeed, in a safe environment; if not, put them in a safe environment. We do have a plan where we do help family members, but ultimately it would still require that that child be in our care because of the liability issues once we get called. But once that process is in place where we are involved with a particular family, if there are other family members and we do have other family members who are taking care of their grandchildren, we do supply support in that area. But the child does have to be officially in our care. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Roland. Mrs. Groenewegen.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wasn't aware that the Department of Health and Social Services actually had a policy that would allow an aunt or a grandmother as an extended family member, or a sister,

to actually be remunerated at the same rate as a foster parent would be to care for a family member. I was not aware that there's a policy to that effect and that is very interesting, because I believe there is a whole generation of fairly young grandparents that are quite literally having their choices and are limited, and even some of their opportunities taken from them, by the fact that they have to get involved in raising grandchildren. It's a matter of heart and they do it because they can't see to turn the knob. On the other hand, I don't think they should be expected to do that without financial support so I'm very interested to hear that that policy exists. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Mr. Minister.