Thank you, Mr. Moses. Minister of Health, Mr. Abernethy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That’s a fairly broad question. I could spend a significant amount of time talking about it. Foster families are an important resource and essential to the safety and well-being of children throughout the Northwest Territories who need that type of support. As the Member knows, and I think other Members know, our first priority is always to provide children with a foster home with extended family or friends where possible, but that doesn’t always work out and we do have to use unrelated foster families.

As of September 1, 2013, there were 203 youth or children in foster care in the Northwest Territories. Thank you.

Thank you. I guess I could have been a little bit more specific. I guess what I was looking for is as a department do we have enough foster parent families for the amount of children that are being apprehended or that need foster care?

Does this government have enough foster parent families as we talk about this situation right now? Thank you.

Thank you. We always need more foster parents. We do work with the NWT Foster Family Coalition and provide them with some money so that they can continue to go out and advertise and encourage people to become foster parents. I think in 2013-14 we provided them with $172,000 to do that work to go out and recruit more. Short answer, we always could use some more loving, caring, dedicated, committed foster parents to support our youth. Thank you.

Thank you. I do agree with the Minister that we do have a lot of caring families out there and I appreciate the hard work that they do, as well as the staff that continue to go out and recruit. The last time I left Yellowknife I saw a booth that was set up in the Yellowknife Airport looking for foster parents.

Does the Minister have a number of apprehended youth in the NWT right now looking for foster parenting placements, and if there’s no placement for them, what are the services that are provided to children that are being apprehended? Where do these children go? Thank you.

Thank you. As of September 1, 2013, there were 593 children receiving services under the Child and Family

Services Act. Three hundred and two of these were in their parental homes, 20 have a provisional foster, 46 are in extended family foster, 137 are with regular foster parents, nine are in northern treatment, 41 are in southern treatment, 50 are in group homes, 13 are receiving support and living in room and board, and six are in adoptive homes. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Minister provides some very interesting statistics, knowing there is a need for foster parenting. He mentioned group homes. I was wondering how many group homes do we currently have in the Northwest Territories.

I’ve been in this job for almost a week now and I’ve had a significant number of briefings, and that number is a number that I haven’t been briefed on yet. I think I know but I’d rather not throw out a number and be incorrect, so I will commit to getting the Member that information.

Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today in my Member’s statement, I referred to a passage in the recently tabled Education Renewal and Innovation Framework, and it stated: “by Grade 4 the average NWT student has already missed half a year of school, or two full years by Grade 10.”

Truancy or attendance concerns are not only unique to the NWT but are a critical barrier to our students’ success and their achievement. My questions today are for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment.

Admittedly, upon review of the ECE framework, it only dedicates one page of this truancy concern in its framework for change document, with little to offer in terms of potential initiatives to address this barrier. Can the Minister of Education indicate as to why so little attention to truancy?

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. The truancy is obviously an important area for education renewal. The issue of attendance is being actively discussed at the national stage and also internationally. One of the reasons, I guess, for education change is it is happening everywhere. Alberta is changing their whole education system.

The Member is correct that some of the students are missing up to one day a week of school, which

translates into almost two years. We’ve had discussion with that Aboriginal Student Achievement Initiative as well. This is not acceptable and it compromises the students’ success in the future. Yes, it may be one page, but it’s a start, and we will be building on that. Truancy and attendance and all those areas are key factors in our discussion to deal with these students.

I’m looking forward to hearing more about that in due course. Can the Minister indicate what role are parents, educators, administrators and our elected community leadership playing within this new framework to address poor attendance in our schools?

The parents and also other stakeholders are actively engaged. The parents, we’ve been told through our engagement, that the parental involvement is a must. Having release of this document in this House and also part of our media release was that we have partners there as well through DEAs and DECs. The NWTTA was part of that. TCSA as the chair was represented at that level.

We want to engage almost everybody across the Northwest Territories because it will have an impact not only the schools, but at home, with the grandparents, the parents. We have to encourage those students that they have to be engaged in the school activities as well. It’s everybody’s role to be part, so we will be reaching out to those individuals.

I’m encouraged that the Minister is encouraged. Elders play an integral part in teaching us many life skills, or at least they should be. These role models serve as mentors for our youth and could assist with attendance issues.

What is the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment doing to facilitate more elders in our schools?

We have rolled out the Elders in Schools Program starting this September, and it’s based on the Members voicing their concerns and ideas in this House. We have developed an action towards that. It is a small start. We want to focus on the regions and on to all communities, the schools. We want to cover 49 schools eventually, and we will get there. Elders play a pivotal and very important role. I fully support that, as well, and we have started that this September. We want to increase that next year as well.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. One solution to achieve better school attendance in remote regions found in many other countries is the creation of a school calendar and daily timetable that is negotiated with the community and school to achieve a better fit for the students. Can the

Minister indicate, have such school calendar models been researched and could we expect to see such models piloted in our NWT schools?

Yes, school calendar and scheduling has been part of some of the schools. Now we have to coordinate with the DEAs and DECs, because some of the schools, as the Member alluded to, there are success stories and some of the students are moving on to post-secondary and coming back and working for the Northwest Territories. There are success stories. Based on that, the school calendars and the scheduling, we have to take those into consideration, as well, on the education renewal and working with the DEAs and DECs as well as our true partners.

Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Part of the process, of course, is re-evaluating the overall education system, the programming that we’re delivering into our schools. Alberta, of course, is going through some changes as well. We follow their curriculum, their departmental exams. If there are changes at that level, we have to monitor that, take that into consideration and follow through with our education system.

Yes, there will be some changes that will reflect on our northern perspective, and we want to have a curriculum that is comparable, on par, at a Canadian level. That is our goal and that is our objective.