Health and Social Development

Health Committee Members:

Committee Member
Committee Member
Committee Member
Committee Member
Committee Member

Greetings

The past few months have been busy in the area of health and social development. We have interviewed and hired new staff that I believe would benefit the community and the Centre. The positions that have changed are the CHN/HCN, Janitor, Receptionist/ Medical Transportation Coordinator, Daycare/ Head Start Coordinator and we will be hiring a new Home Care Aide Worker.

Daycare/ Headstart

Daycare is a professional childcare center for working parents and /or parents in training. The Daycare provides childcare for children of the ages of six months to twelve years of age. Daycare is not just a baby-sitting service but offers programming for children, i.e. games, learning, socialization, motor skill development, role-play, crafts, music, cultural activities, etc. Children receive guidance, both spiritually and socially. The Daycare is funded only for 11 child “seats” but has room to accommodate 20 (and is licensed through S.T.C. to seat 20 children).

Medical Transportation

This program provides for a medical taxi to transport members to appointments off the reserve (doctor, dentist, optometrist, specialists, etc.). It also provides for purchase orders for private transportation (see below) but only for special circumstances. This program is WAY over budget at six – months through the fiscal year. Some measures have already been taken to cut down on costs and policies enforced.

The following is a list of cost containment measures that have been implemented in order to cut costs in this program:

All appointments must be made with the Medical Transportation Coordinator @ Wellness Centre. Members are also encouraged to give 2 days notice so that proper scheduling of the medical taxi can be done.
Escorts have been limited to one person per client.
More client information must be provided to the Medical Transportation Coordinator i.e. the type of appointment to be made
FNIHB policy for medical transportation changed in July. They are now requiring additional information for clientele (DOB, DIAND #, appointment location, Dr. name, appointment time, etc.)
If members don’t hand back their CMA’s (Certificate of Medical Attendance) they will not receive any additional purchase orders until they are handed back.
48 hours notice is required if clients are requesting a purchase order. P.O.’s are only issued when the taxi is booked, full, or off the reserve.
Private mileage rates are .15 cents a kilometer (FNIHB RATES) so a trip to Tisdale is $13.50.
Private Mileage rates are given to the closest destination unless it is a specialist in which they will be paid .15 cents a kilometer.
Members must use the medical taxi and will not receive reimbursement for private transportation unless the taxi is booked or off the reserve.
Appointments must be coordinated whenever possible so that more than one client is transported per taxi trip.
Meal and Accommodation vouchers will be used for over night stays and trips that require travel for over 6 hours
The medical taxi will not run after hours or on weekends, in case of an emergency please phone the ambulance.

CAP (Community Addictions Program)

This program provides for a full time addictions councilor to work with individuals (both adult and youth), groups, and the community in creating awareness of various forms of addictions (alcohol, drugs, gambling, etc.) and their effects on individuals, family and the community. People who want help can talk and share with the counselor and / or be referred to treatment centers. This program also provides funding for a few activities i.e. Addictions Awareness Week activities, youth activities and STC family camps.

Child and Family Services

This job follows the Child and Family Services Program as well as advocacy, parent education, child protection, and placement services, and provides a 24-hour toll free response line (1 – 866 – 871 – 4237).

Ron Pollock STC Program Director will be working only half time due to health issues; supervisors will be covering off during this time. John Sealy, independent evaluator to the STC Health and Services Program, has now finished his evaluations. The results will be presented later this year.

Living Well

This position along with the CAP position will be combined

Staff:

Worker still TBA

Home Care

The Home Care program provides for a Home Care Nurse (combined with CHN), a Home Care Aide, supplies, etc. Staff is the most important aspect of this program because providing services for home care clients essentially is the program. The Home Care Nurse assesses clients, home management is done by the Home Care Aide and care coordination, personal care, and etc. is done by both the Home Care Nurse and Aide. We combined the Home Care Nurse with the Community Health Nurse to provide a full time nurse at the Wellness Centre (1/2 Home Care, ½ CHN).

Community Health

Click here to download a copy of our Emergency Response Pamphlet

This program provides services to help maintain the health of our community i.e. education and awareness, health and lifestyle teaching, diabetes issues (ADI), health monitoring, child immunizations (was given a recognition award for 90% immunizations for 2 year olds), vaccinations, chronic care, FAS/FAE education and awareness, HIV/AIDS prevention, pre and post natal care, pandemic planning etc. We hired a new CHN worker combined with the Home Care Nurse to be at the Wellness Centre full time.

Management/Coordination/O & M

This provides for management and coordination of health and social programs and operation and maintenance of the Kinistin Wellness Centre. We have had new committees for the Health and Social Development as well as the CFS committee and they are both separate committee’s.

We have tried to do things differently since I have been here, i.e. follow policies, making workers accountable with their time, etc. We have had workshops in the community level and will continue to bring workshops to the community level. We will be having an interagency meeting to strengthen the teamwork amongst the service providers in the community level.

Some past projects we did do and were successful with are the, Health Fair and Trade Show, which was in conjunction with Treaty Day, we involved surrounding service providers to come out and demonstrate or discuss their health services they had to offer. We also had Cultural Camp, which was a good turn out even though we moved the camp closer to the reserve. We are still getting feed back from the community about the camp and will be evaluating it for next year. We also had many mini workshops that the HF and CAP programs worked together with and we will be bringing more out to the community.