Research has shown that in the Northwest Territories the vast majority of apprehensions that have existed to date have resulted as a result of neglect, as opposed to abuse, which is one of the reasons we’re going to a completely differential response of dealing with children in those abuse situations.
The new approach is supporting families, finding ways to support families so that we can actually keep the children with the families. If they do need counseling, if they need all these other types of supports, we’re going to be there to work with them to find solutions.
When it’s abuse, we still may need to be in a situation where we have to apprehend, which is where foster family comes in. I hear the Member’s concerns about families wanting to go through the process, but we do have an obligation to ensure that these children are protected once we’ve taken them away as a result of abuse.
Many of these changes are taking place as we speak and some of them may take a little longer than others. The differential response is going to take three to five years to fully roll out and test and make sure that it’s meeting the needs, but at the immediate time we are doing a number of things to ensure that the direction is being passed down to our staff.
As the Member knows, the assistant directors have been delegated in all seven authorities as associate directors under the act. We’ve updated our manuals. Those are going live right away. Later today I will actually be doing a notice of motion for first reading of bills on the Child and Family Services Act where we’re going to be making significant improvements to the act.
One of the changes that we’re making to the act is requiring that notification of applicable Aboriginal organizations of an apprehension order in respect to an Aboriginal child and providing for Aboriginal organizations to be party of an apprehension hearing, a child protection hearing and youth protection hearing.
We want to involve the people, we want to involve the communities and we want to involve the appropriate regional Aboriginal governments when we are faced with an actual apprehension.