Thank you, Ms. Meade. Mr. Beaulieu.

It’s very unfortunate that money can’t go directly to the communities. I think that the communities would have a better idea. I know that in speaking to the elders in the community -- I know I’m out of time, Mr. Chairman, I’ll be short -- the elders in the community indicate to me that their idea of trying to work with the emotional and social aspects around suicide prevention would be to be bringing people. I had asked the Minister on this on another matter, to bring people in that will work with the communities, like healers and so on that will work with the communities. I think that’s something that communities should have the option to look at.

Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. More of a comment but I’ll go to the Minister for the question.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Healers and other initiatives that the Member mentioned would have to come from other sources of money. This is something that I’ve been communicating with the Member and it is an ongoing challenge for us to come up with those resources.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Next on my list is Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The first thing I have on my list here is the Healthy Families Program. I wanted to say that I appreciate its expansion. Modest to what is required, but this is such a good program that every community we get it in is a major gain. I know it’s also expensive and the Standing Committee on Social Programs knew it was expensive when we made the recommendation to get this in every community. We also think it’s the very best investment we can make.

Could I just ask the Minister first of all, the $500,000 that’s provided for expansion, I believe that would be for a team in each community like a nurse or social worker and that social worker can work with about 30 families maximum. This will provide key support for about 30 programs in each of those two new communities. So I’m just wondering if I’ve got that right.

While the Minister’s at it, I’m wondering how long this program has been running. I’m wondering when we established the Healthy Families Program in the four communities that have it now. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Lee.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I am going to have to take that comment under advisement. I ‘m sorry; I’ll have to follow up. Thank you.

I assume that holds for how long the program has been going too. Jurisdictions that

have had this, as I mentioned in a Member’s statement several days ago and I profiled the advances and benefits that have been achieved with programs like this, I am wondering have we an evaluation program in place. If we do, when can we get the results on that and, if not, can we get that in place? I think, again, possibly this is our single biggest opportunity for savings and gains in both lives and consequences. Thank you.

Right now our focus is to expand them, but I understand the need to evaluate and take stock, so I will commit to doing that. Thank you.

I appreciate that commitment. The strategic plan and implementation of it, I assume, will have some costs associated and I think the Minister is hoping to get that done in the next several months, so presumably the implementation of it will happen during the 2011-2012 budget year. Have there been dollars identified or will that implementation be expected to be from internal resources?

I don’t believe we get separate funding for implementing a strategic document. There will be programs that we will have to go through a business plan process or we would have to do it internally, thank you.

I am sure the Minister sees the dilemma that I am trying to sort out here that here we are putting a program together but not providing any dollars for it, even for its implementation. So you know we are preparing a plan that we could have to wait another year to implement, that is what I am wondering. I know the Minister has also mentioned in terms of the five community child and family services committees they were hoping to establish has been trying to get that going and sampling the water out there, working with communities. I am wondering if the community of Dettah or Yellowknife have been approached for establishing child and family services committees.

I can tell you that we are looking at the possibility. The Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority, the CEO is meeting with a community group outside of Yellowknife, that being Dettah and N’Dilo to discuss the possibility of that committee. Thank you.

I appreciate that information from the Minister. I would encourage the Minister to look to the MLAs to help try and develop support and engagement with that process. I think that would be a legitimate request from a Minister and a legitimate role that you could expect an MLA to play, to do work in that area. So that is just a note.

I would like to move on now to the mental health program review started in November. I don’t recall having any input to the terms of reference for that review, but knowing my memory, that could be a

plus or a minus. I would appreciate to know whether such a process would include the opportunity for Regular MLAs or committee to have input on the terms of reference. Specific to that review, does it include patient release and readmission policy; a review of those policies in the mental health program review? Thank you.

I will ask the deputy minister to give more details, but just to explain to the Members here, under the Foundation for Change, there is a work item there to review mental health programming. I was advised, after the deputy minister came on board, when she looked at all of the programs and we identified right away that this mental health program needed to be looked at very closely with a view of improving that and restructuring that, so we have undertaken those actions. I don’t know the process is in terms of getting the terms of reference reviewed and such. I don’t think that we do that for all reviews. There is always a question, but I just want to let you know that we internally identified to look at this programming for all the reasons you have mentioned. The acute program right down to all of the community services that are available, so it has been tendered and we are getting it reviewed. I feel that the real good work can be done by looking at what the findings are and how do we move forward from that. If there are any more details that you need on this review, I would be happy to have Paddy add on to it. It is up to you. Thank you.

I am very happy that this review is going forward. I think it is great that the department has had the initiative to do this. Again, I think this is probably a given that the Standing Committee on Social Programs would appreciate the opportunity to have input on the terms of reference for those sorts of reviews because I can say as an MLA for Weledeh, that I have had many issues and concerns from my constituents over the years in this area and have developed some concerns and an awareness of the sorts of things that are happening out there. I am very happy to see this review going ahead and I look forward to the results. I wanted to know, thanks to the Minister for her offer, one additional detail and that is whether the review covers the availability and effectiveness of addictions treatment programs in the Northwest Territories. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Ms. Meade.

Thank you, Ms. Meade. Next on my list is Mr. Hawkins.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Recently I have inquired with the Department of Health and Social Services to follow up on some costing and focus on what we do for the Quitline and that would, of course, be people who have quit smoking. As many of us know, I guess it is a cessation phone line you call to speak about your woes of smoking cigarettes. I haven’t called it myself so I don’t specifically know, but I believe it’s set up in that context.

As I’ve learned from the Department of Health and Social Services, the response from the Minister, I believe $24,000 has gone to radio advertising and there’s a contract, I believe an Ontario company called Sykes. I guess they take the phone calls. Now, I realize some of this is federal money, if not all of it is federal money. Under this heading of healthy programs, has the Minister looked at setting up phone lines here in the North that could deal with people to take their addictions calls in the same manner of in a follow-up treatment?

Now, I know there’s a mental health line. You hear that on the radio, where people can call if they’re having trouble, which I think is a great service because, obviously, it wouldn’t be up if people didn’t need it. I certainly hope that that’s the case, obviously, that it wouldn’t be there if people didn’t need it or use it. But that said, I’m specifically looking for the area of addictions treatment where

people can call and talk about their addiction problems and hopefully avoid a relapse. Has the department set anything up or followed through on any particular follow-up treatment process in that type of regard? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are lots of issues wrapped up into the Member’s statement there. The Quitline, that program is being delivered outside of the NWT because we could not cost-effectively man or woman that phone line and to give the kind of technical information to those who wished to quit smoking. It’s not just us but many jurisdictions across the country are using the same service provider so that you have people who are equipped to answer those questions. We expect that demand for that service will increase when the federal government launches a more aggressive campaign on the cigarette packaging.

The Member then asked questions about whether there is a phone line people could call about their addictions issues or aftercare and all that. I don’t think we can solve that by having a phone line. Those are things that our health care providers and social workers and everybody on the ground deal with. It was brought up earlier that we spend about $6 million in mental health programming with our community mental health workers on the ground. All of our care providers, whether they be doctors, nurses, social workers, they are the ones people need to go to get help in that area. Thank you.