As a Regular Member, I'm active on our social development committee which has identified children and family services as an area of focus. From this work, I have been learning so much about the issues facing families and youth in the NWT. One area that I am becoming more familiar with is the foster care system, and I want thank everyone who has taken the time to speak with me about this topic as it's a sensitive one.

Mr. Speaker, when I look at our social problems, I can see the gap that youth and young adults are falling into. Aging-out or kicked out of foster care, they often find themselves with little to no options, with too many going on to become chronic dependents of social welfare as adults. One way we can remove adults from our system is to prevent them from being dependent on it in the first place. And in the Northwest Territories, only one organization is supporting youth to get them out of the system, and that is Home Base Yellowknife.

Home Base is a youth support organization that offers four programs for youth to help them become self-sufficient and deal with trauma from their childhoods. Home Base has ten full-time dorm spaces in their main building on 52nd Street, also operating a shelter there from 8 to 8 daily. The shelter provides a safe space for youth to sleep, have a meal, and wash their clothes.

Home Base operates a second youth centre next to Overlander Sports, open from 12 to 8 every day, providing a second place for youth to shower, do laundry, eat, and work on resumes and life planning.

Home Base also has a housing program that assists 20- to 24-year-olds with housing through commercial leases or at their newly acquired Park Place apartment building near City Hall. Youth can attend any of Home Base's programs to receive support, advice, and guidance on careers and life management skills. The goal of Home Base is to stabilize youth in order to reintegrate them into society and get them back into school.

Although Home Base wants to increase youth shelter supports to 24 hours a days 7 days a week, their current financial projection means a cut to shelter hours is coming rather than an expansion. In order to even maintain the current level of programming, Home Base needs additional emergency homelessness assistance funding to do so.

While Home Base receives programming money, they do not have core funding available for wages or to buy essential supplies. With core funding for staff and supplies, Home Base could offer 24-hour supports to youth in an effort to divert this vulnerable population from a lifetime of dependence on social programming. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.