Evidence of meeting #63 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 40th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was yukon.
Executive Director, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Society of Yukon
I can go first.
My understanding of the process thus far is that the territorial government has announced they will be putting the first draft together and then putting the strategy together. Then there will be a series of meetings or forums or summits in which members of the community may have opportunity for input. The government's first part is done by them. That's my understanding.
Michelle, I'm not sure....
Executive Director, Skookum Jim Friendship Centre
We haven't been involved in it yet.
Administative Coordinator, Second Opinion Society
I'm pretty new to all of this. I've only been working there for a few months. I'm afraid I've been apolitical in that respect so far.
Executive Director, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Society of Yukon
My understanding is that Mike McCann has been developing this idea of the social inclusion strategy for a while, and that it came to the cabinet level and was approved to move forward. It's a government initiative for about the first year of the process, before community members or non-profit or anything would be involved in the process.
Executive Director, Skookum Jim Friendship Centre
I can just say that we're not involved yet. We have been contacted for a meeting, but that hasn't happened yet and we haven't seen anything, any documents.
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Are you hopeful that it will present some possibilities and support, some opportunities to improve the work you do?
Executive Director, Skookum Jim Friendship Centre
Yes, for sure. I'm hopeful that it will and that we'll have the opportunity to put our input in before it's a final document.
As mentioned in my recommendations, we've asked for government to consult with the friendship centres on urban aboriginal policies and that, too, it would be nice if they maybe consulted with us before the report was done.
Sometimes I think that's where we find that we're left until the end, that it's done and then they come and ask you to have a look at it and endorse it. I'm not saying by just the territorial government, it's all levels of government. So it's nice, if people want our input, to maybe include us in the beginning of the process.
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
It seems to me that if we got community more engaged at the very minimal discussion about some of these things, we might actually have that paradigm shift that some of you spoke of, where attitudes change and all of a sudden people who heretofore were seen as more a problem to be solved are now looked at as contributing, exciting members of our community who have particular skills that aren't being recognized or whatever.
I'm hoping again that we'll be able to, in our report, reflect some of that and certainly some of the recommendations that you've made here today. I'm not quite sure how it all connects yet, but the federal government might be engaged or involved in or supportive of efforts to develop social inclusion for people.
Thank you.
Administative Coordinator, Second Opinion Society
It reminds of one thing I could talk to you about, which is that I think there's a notion in Canada that if you have your own apartment and you can call yourself independent, that's the highest good, and in a way the whole notion of supported housing is more a connected one.
Also, in what I've gathered of aboriginal approaches to mental health, when we attended a panel a couple of weeks ago the whole idea that people who might be living rough will “get better” if they're put into an apartment somewhere, they were like, “No”. This doesn't apply to everybody—please—but some people actually like the old way of life of not having to have a fixed address. I feel this is very dangerous territory, because I'm not advocating that in general, but on the idea that a sort of white-bread notion of having your own apartment is the solution, that is not the solution. So a more connected one that involves more discussion, as you say, is helpful.
Conservative
Conservative
Dona Cadman Conservative Surrey North, BC
Yes.
I agree with you that mental health has to be talked about and we need to have a change of attitude towards this. If someone says they have mental health issues, automatically they think they're crazy. If you do something a little erratic, they say, “Well, of course, mental health”.
How can we make it more acceptable, that it's not a bad thing to have a mental health problem? If you take care of yourself, there are things that you have to do. What would you say to that? Where would you go with that?
Administative Coordinator, Second Opinion Society
I think the self-help movement has been of immeasurable support in that area. I had a yoga teacher who talked about spiritual emergencies, and how you can do yoga through your spiritual emergency. You think you're going crazy, you think you're falling apart, you do your yoga, you keep up your breathing and your body work, and you come out the other side and realize you've grown as a person and that what you saw as a concrete wall was in fact just a little detour. Suddenly you're a bigger person and more functional, even though what you went through was a meltdown all over the place.
I hope I don't sound too spiritual, but I think if we had a view of people as being spiritual, a view that we find in the self-help movement, in which mental health is one of the components along with physical health, we might solve a lot of problems. I think we're a lot of the way there because of the last 20 years.
This is a Second Opinion Society hobby horse, but the emphasis on antidepressants and drugs is both expensive and contrary to healthful living. It gets people hooked into little addictive spirals. It depends on the person and what is triggering the whole situation, but a lot of people do a lot better with more body work and talking and recreational therapies.
It would be good to educate the public that drugs only mask the problems. It's like using Claritin if you have allergies. You're putting a band-aid on the problem. If somebody has hives and you give them Claritin, the hives will go away, but it's awful to do that as a long-term strategy. My little boy gets hives, so I'll find out what causes it and then he won't have to take the Claritin. It's the same kind of thing.
Executive Director, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Society of Yukon
A couple of things come to mind. I know you were speaking about mental health. From a community-based perspective, there's a fear, an “othering”, that happens with people with mental health issues, substance abuse issues, FASD. They become the other. We've become quite fearful of that, and it's connected with crime and what's termed as erratic behaviour.
From a community education perspective, we have to decrease that fear of the other. We have to show the other side of the story. We have to be strength-based, capacity-based, rather than problem-focused. We have the honour of seeing the capacity and the strengths in the people we work with. I don't know that the community always gets to see that. We see media stories of individuals with a mental health or FASD problem that have committed crimes and become a danger to society, but we often don't see the other side of that.
I don't know if that's part of the strategy, but it's certainly social inclusion to show that strength, that capacity, to move the narrative away from the problem focus. We shouldn't think that mental health issues, substance issues, or FASD are all problems and it's hopeless.
I think that changing the messaging and operating from a community education perspective could move us towards a transformation. Maybe that's just my hopeful self.
Conservative
Dona Cadman Conservative Surrey North, BC
Michelle, you mentioned something about youth diversion programs. I've been involved with one down in the lower mainland. I was wondering if you could tell me a little about your program.
Executive Director, Skookum Jim Friendship Centre
The program is for youth 12 to 17 years old. The youth are diverted from the court system. Minor crimes like liquor, tickets, B&Es, or some kinds of physical abuse can sometimes be corrected by diverting youths to one of the three programs we have in Whitehorse.
They would come to our centre, the ones that are actually diverted to our youth diversion program. We would provide an eight-week program for them. They would also have conditions of the court that need to be met. So they may need referral services to one of the other agencies in town.
They go through this program. They meet at our centre two days a week for an hour and a half to two hours, and they may need to do restitution as well. Once the youth have completed the program, then it's taken back to court to say that they've met the requirements. Then the youth would not have a record, and he would go on to a better way of living.
Conservative
Executive Director, Skookum Jim Friendship Centre
We actually have a family support worker who works with the diversion coordinator, and we bring facilitators in. Then they have the opportunity of meeting with the family support worker, one on one.
I can give you an example of one family we worked with that had three youths who were out of school. One of them was in the diversion program. The family support worker actually went to the home and helped not only deal with the issues of the one youth but of the whole family unit. This involved setting up a schedule and showing what it looks like to get up in the morning and get everybody to school and to put a routine in place. The family was able to get all three youths back into school.
But it's a lot of work, and sometimes it's very difficult to get the acceptance of the youth, and then the whole family as well, to get involved.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
I just want to say thank you to all our guests and witnesses for being here today. We really believe you guys do the hard work on the front lines, and if there's any way we can make recommendations to influence and to come alongside and help leverage what you guys are doing, that's what we want to be doing.
Thank you once again for being here and taking the time out of your schedule.
With that, the meeting is adjourned.