By Angela Hill
Herald Staff
Saskatchewan plans to hire health promotion co-ordinators with funding from the federal government.
This comes after $300,000 was given from Health Canada’s Aboriginal Health Transition Fund to a joint youth suicide prevention project between the Ministry of Health and the Métis Nation was announced Wednesday.
“It’s a tremendous support for us in terms of us developing good suicide prevention in the north,” said Michelle LeClair-Harding, acting director of health for MNS.
“I think it’ll make huge difference in terms ... of improving the quality of life for Métis people in the north.”
Ads for the positions, located in Cumberland House, Ile-a-la-Crosse and Buffalo Narrows, will appear over the next couple of days, LeClair-Harding said.
The three health promotion co-ordinators will be charged with identifying the extent of suicide risk among Métis youth, creating partnerships and finding best practices that will be implemented in programs.
While the statistical data is going to be Métis-based, the results will help all northerners, said LeClair-Harding.
“Any information that they are able to gather about the risk for one group will certainly benefit us in understanding the other group as well,” said Kathy Willerth, director of mental health and addiction services for Sask-atchewan Ministry of Health.
Along with administering the funds from the government of Canada, the provincial Ministry of Health will encourage MNS to work with Northern Health Strategy
and northern regional health authorities, Willerth said.
The Northern Health Strategy facilitates partnerships with government, northern groups, families, young people and individuals, said the strategy’s co-ordinator, Nap Gardiner.
“Quite often, what they need is immediate and long-term assistance to enable them to best utilize tools and practices to deal with this issue,” he said in an email.
“This funding announc-ement will go a long way towards establishing a consistent way forward.”
The funding will cover the first year of the project, but LeClair-Harding said she hopes it continues with additional funds to implement programs designed from the research.
Warren McCall, the NDP critic for First Nations and Métis Relations in Saskatchewan, calls the project a good first step.
“Any dollars that go towards (prevention of) youth suicide, we’re glad to see the money put forward,” he said.
In the future, McCall said he’d like to see the Saskatchewan government go even further in trying to addresses suicide among aboriginal and Métis people.
“We’re glad to see the dollars ... but they’re not doing what they should on the number of fronts they should be doing it to attack poverty, to engage First Nations and Métis people in the social and economic life of this province.”
While the program is to be piloted in the north, LeClair-Harding said she hopes it will eventually spread across the province.
ahill@paherald.sk.ca
