Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate the Member’s comments and suggestions and questions. The Member did talk about the shutdown of the long-term care facility in Aklavik. The facility in Aklavik was a supported living facility, and I understand that the Housing Corp has actually constructed an independent living unit to replace that facility. In working with the Housing Corp, we’ve actually ensured that these new facilities the Housing Corp is building to support our residents and needs throughout the Northwest Territories, including Aklavik, is actually program space where we can have our home support workers and other professionals come in and actually support our residents that are living in those facilities.
But I agree with the Member, we want our residents to stay in communities for as long as possible, which is why we need to continue to move forward with Our Elders, Our Communities and find ways to ensure that the residents can stay in their communities, preferably in their homes. I’ve had an opportunity to talk to a lot of seniors, and most of the people I’ve talked to would like to stay in their homes as long as possible. Unfortunately, we know they can’t. They may have to move to independent living where they can have some general supports – and that’s what the Housing Corp is so wonderfully providing at this point – and then, unfortunately, they might need additional support, which means they might have to go to a long-term care facility like the one in Inuvik or the one we’re building in Norman Wells or the one we’ve finished building in Behchoko or the one that’s here in Yellowknife or Inuvik or Smith or Hay River or some of the other communities. But I do hear the Member and I’m always open to suggestions on how we can support our residents who live in the communities and support them to live there as long as physically possible.
I did hear the Member say in Fort McPherson there are a lot of elders and he feels that they need some additional support and one position may not be enough. We can commit to doing a little bit of a sort of load assessment at Fort McPherson. I’m not familiar with the details in Fort McPherson.
I will say that some of these shortfalls, or some of these perceived shortfalls, we’ll be in a better position to deal with once we’ve moved to one health and social services system. We’ll be able to work together and move resources where they need and be a lot more flexible than we are now. So we’re very excited to have the support of committee as we move forward to go to a more integrated, collaborative system that’s going to help us address some of these issues, including the issues around nursing services in Tsiigehtchic. As we have a more collaborative, integrated system that’s focused on the clients as opposed to the system itself, once we’ve fixed the structure we’ll be
in a lot more flexible position to actually start addressing some of these real challenges that we see.
I have committed to come in with the Member to visit Tsiigehtchic again and talk to the residents and we’ll have an opportunity to discuss what the community would like, recognizing that there may be options that may not be a nurse. We did go to Alaska and meet with a number of individuals who provided some really unique programming, and one of the solutions they came up with is a community-based representative who is trained in specific skills who can provide some of those up-front services. That might also help us with some of the continuity of services and ensuring that we have a longer range of services. I don’t know what the solution is, but our ears are open and we’re looking forward to having those discussions.
The online training programs, we have talked about that at length today, and those programs are going to be delivered by the Gwich’in. Every Gwich’in community – Aklavik, Fort McPherson, Tsiigehtchic – I think there’s going to be one more out there, as well, and we’re looking to partner with other philanthropic organizations to help bring more money in so that more of these programs can be delivered. But at this time we have the money, the $1.2 million that we have distributed to the different Aboriginal governments around the Northwest Territories, and as I said before, they know what they want. They know what they believe is going to help their people and add the most benefit. We’re very supportive of them, and if they need us for technical or clinical expertise, we’re there.
How many people in treatment facilities in the Northwest Territories? We’ve contracted with four and at any given time there are probably 12 residents of the Northwest Territories in treatment. It seems to be fairly consistent. It hasn’t changed much in the last number of years. Even with the expedited process, people are able to get in quicker, but the average number of individuals who have identified that they’re ready to seek residential treatment is one of our continuums, one of our program areas, it’s about 12 at any given time. Thank you.