Federal wellness funding not equally accessible in Nunavut communities

Every year, a federal aboriginal program reserves over $3 million for community health and wellness program in Nunavut, but not all of Nunavut’s communities have the capacity to take up the offer.

“Often communities aren’t able to spend all their funding whether it’s because of lack of personnel to run their programs, or… because it’s a paper-based proposal and reporting system, and it has financial reporting requirements,” said Tracy Thomas, the territorial wellness coordinator for the Government of Nunavut. “There are a lot of hurdles for some community groups to be able to handle this.”

In 2003-04, the GN sent back $125,000, according to Health Canada. The year before, they returned $85,800.

The worst year was 2000-01 when the GN returned $224,610 — about 9 per cent of the total Brighter Futures funding for that year.

The GN’s health and social services department is responsible for administering all of the funding. They reserve money for each hamlet. Hamlet councils accept proposals from community members — including church groups, sports groups, non-profit organizations, other groups or individuals — for projects, and ultimately determine who gets what funds, though this must first be approved by the GN.

“Some communities are fabulous and spend every penny, some of them lapse a little bit, some of them lapse a lot,” Thomas said. “It varies throughout Nunavut.”

To help communities spend more of the money available, the GN has hired three regional coordinators to help individual communities.

That department has also translated all of the proposal and reporting forms into Inuktitut and Innuinaqtun.

Communities can also help themselves organize their funding by hiring local wellness coordinators, who can assist the community members and groups in writing proposals and reports. Not all communities have wellness coordinators.

“It’s up to the individual community if they want to use their funding hiring a community wellness coordinator and having less funding available for projects,” Thomas said.

Where does the money come from?

Federal wellness funding comes in two pots, which are both designed to help community members design and run their own wellness programs.

One is Brighter Futures. That program offers just over $2 million this year for community-based programs that help create family communities and healthy environments for children and other community members.

Last year in Nunavut, 108 programs received funding, including 19 breakfast or lunch programs, nine snack programs (mainly in day cares), food preparation and food safety projects, funding to support caribou and seal hunting and community feasts.

Other programs eligible for funding range from mental health counselling and youth on the land programs to parenting workshops and food banks. The program also allows funding for gun/boat or skidoo safety courses.

The other big pot of money is called Building Healthy Communities, which provides about $1.1 million each year for Nunavut.

That program has a wider focus.

“Building healthy communities is more to address critical gaps in the medical health and social services programs,” Thomas said. “Things like: crisis intervention, aftercare and training for the caregivers and the population.”

Nunavummiut ran 81 projects using Building Healthy Communities funding last year, but that wasn’t quite enough.

Funding is not supposed to go towards capital projects, like buying major equipment or buildings, which provides another hurdle for communities with limited public space in which to run programs.