Montreal college to train Nunavik health, social service workers

The multicultural education centre at Collège Marie-Victorin in Montreal. (HANDOUT PHOTO)

Collège Marie-Victorin in Montreal is teaming up with the Nunavik Regional Board of Health and Social Services of health to offer training for Inuit who work as community workers in frontline health and social services in Nunavik, the college recently announced.

With no equivalent of Nunavut Arctic College in Nunavik, college-level courses end up being offered by southern Quebec colleges or Cégeps, an acronym for “Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel,” known officially in English as “General and Vocational College.”

Starting in September 2013, Marie-Victorin will offer courses in Kuujjuaq and Puvirnituq to Inuit who work in frontline health and social services jobs.

“We are very proud to continue our collaboration with the Nunavik regional board, and always with a view to improving living conditions in northern Quebec,” said Josée Deschênes, Marie-Victorin’s director of continuing education and business services, in a recent news release.

“Since 1991, our college has been responsible for the post-secondary education of young French-speaking Nunavik Inuit. Thanks to a partnership with the Kativik School Board, our school receives young Inuit students every year who enroll in a specialized course of study that allows them to gradually integrate into the college program of their choice in the regular sector.”

Trainers from Marie-Victorin have gone to several communities in Nunavik to provide training session to 30 community workers for the past two years.

Inuit participants and southern social workers who work in Nunavik have also received one-on-one supervision from trainers at Marie-Victorin in Nunavik or through videoconferences.

In April 2012, Marie-Victorin started to offer training to 40 workers who work with troubled youth in the Nunavik’s three youth rehabilitation centres, in Kuujjuaq, Puvirnituq and Salluit.

To deliver this training, Marie-Victorin partnered with the youth rehabilitiation centre, Boscoville 2000, in Rivière-des-Prairies.