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Cambridge centre offers help to addicted, abused

Funding problems plague programs in other communities

SARA MINOGUE

Alice Isnor, the wellness coordinator for Cambridge Bay, has noticed that other Nunavummiut are interested to hear about their programs and services. “We’re very, very lucky to have this,” she said. “We’re really busy, but we’re willing to share if people call us or ask how we do this or that.” (FILE PHOTO)

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Kicking booze and drug habits just got easier for several Cambridge Bay men signed up for a three-week counselling program starting Monday at the Community Wellness Centre, but people in other communities in the region aren’t nearly so lucky.

“We try to run something every month,” said Alice Isnor, the hamlet’s wellness coordinator, who alternates male and female counselling sessions.

That makes Cambridge Bay unique in the Kitikmeot. Not only can people get treatment and counselling, but they can sign up when they’re ready for it — and not just when it’s available.

Other communities are not so fortunate.

Kugluktuk has only recently hired a new coordinator for its Awareness Centre, after budget cuts forced the hamlet to reduce services.

Neither Taloyoak nor Gjoa Haven have wellness centres, or wellness coordinators who can petition for funds and help local groups access money for wellness programs, including counselling, alcohol and drug awareness programs and programs for children.

David Shadbolt was the wellness coordinator in Gjoa Haven until the first week of October, when funding for the position ran out.

“There’s limited options in Gjoa Haven for people in need of counselling,” Shadbolt said.

The hamlet of Gjoa Haven hired Shadbolt for six months using $24,000 of Brighter Futures funding — federal funding that goes to aboriginal communities for health and wellness programming.

But the hamlet also insisted Shadbolt work with a trainee. Shadbolt suggested making the two positions part-time, so the pair could work for six months rather than three. Nonetheless, the money ran out five months into the contract.

During his five months on the job, Shadbolt made several achievements.

In late October — about two weeks after his contract had run out — Shadbolt oversaw a substance abuse workshop, with 10 participants and a counsellor from Calgary with 30 years of experience.

He hopes to start a 12-step support group for the participants of that workshop.

At the end of November, Shadbolt will volunteer to oversee a workshop on healing, grieving and loss, which he expects to attract even more participants.

Shadbolt also helped form a society for seniors, and applied for funding to help seniors travel to a regional conference next year.

And he worked with a mental health consultant newly hired by the Government of Nunavut’s department of health and social services. They collaborated on a proposal to start a program called “therapeutic playworld for children,” which helps children recover from the trauma of physical or sexual abuse.

“They’ve done some wonderful work, except for themselves,” said Sterling Firlotte, the hamlet’s assistant senior administrative officer, and a former wellness coordinator himself.

The problem, Firlotte said, is that the hamlet lacks dedicated funding for the position. That means any money going towards a wellness coordinator must come directly from the same pot of money that could be funding wellness programs.

In other words, hamlets have to choose to cut programs, or gamble that a wellness coordinator will be worth his or her salary — all while worrying about their main responsibility: delivering basic sewer, water, garbage and maintenance services.

“We’re chasing our tail,” Firlotte said.

Cambridge Bay uses funding from Brighter Futures to pay its wellness coordinator, who runs programs using a multi-year funding package from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, but that funding is only available thanks to the past work of another wellness coordinator, and the continuity of staff who have contributed to a stable, well-staffed centre that can administer programs while seeking out more money.

Nobody disputes that there is a demand for wellness programs in the communities.

Peter Harte is a defence lawyer with Maliiganik legal aid services in Cambridge Bay. He often recommends clients seek counselling and says his community is “very, very fortunate” to have such resources in the community.

“My clients, for the most part, are people who need to heal in a very broad sense, rather than people who should be punished,” Harte said.

Harte describes one client who told him about being sexually assaulted — he used the word “raped” — by a janitor when he was six years old and in Grade 1. For the next three years at the residential school, he slept at the foot of his brother’s bed.

“That’s the kind of incident that can affect you profoundly,” Harte said. “And that story is not unusual.”

The lawyer sees a need for wellness centers in all of the communities he serves.

The impact of treatment on individuals is life-changing, he said, and the impacts of a wellness centre on a community are many.

In addition to basic treatment, wellness centres provide job opportunities for people who want to change their lives. People who work at the wellness centres become agents of change in the community, by spreading the message that violence is not appropriate.

Early treatment could stop many people from turning to booze and drugs in an attempt to forget their problems, only to see them multiply when they get in trouble with the law.

“My end of it is the wrong end to be putting money into resources,” Harte said.

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