Where there’s no involvement of the child and family services of the requirements under the act for engagements, grandparents are, absolutely, free to welcome their grandchildren into their home, but the GNWT is not responsible for the financial costs of those individuals coming in unless the child and family services has been engaged.
If grandparents choose to take a child into their care and they do run into financial difficulties, as the Member indicated, they are available to go to income support if they are having financial challenges as a result of bringing those children in.
We are modifying the way we provide child and family services here in the Northwest Territories with a focus on the families. Our goal is to keep them with the parents or extended families as much as possible, and that’s the direction we’ll be taking.