Little funding for FASD in Inuit communities

I have serious concerns about federal government commitment to fetal alcohol spectrum disorder — as evidenced by funding levels of programming for Inuit. Two weeks ago, Pauktuutit participated in a workshop sponsored by the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch of Health Canada to assist in the development of national program guidelines regarding FASD.

To give you some context, you need to know that we suspect that many, many children, youth and adults in our communities are FASD-affected, but there are virtually no health professionals practising in Inuit communities who can even diagnose FASD.

Rarely are any such assessments conducted by sending individuals south, and so we have no hard figures to offer.

The Nunavut government representative at the workshop reported that even though they now have a workplan for addressing FASD issues, there are no plans yet for diagnosis, because they don’t want to raise expectations for services and programs that cannot be met by the current or anticipated level of resources.

A representative from an Inuit community in Labrador reported that a social worker in her community suspected that a number of children she was in contact with through her work had FASD. She established a partnership with other agencies and was able to fundraise enough to bring in a doctor to assess approximately 33 children from that community.

Twenty-seven of these children received an FASD diagnosis! There were more children on the list to be assessed, but there wasn’t sufficient time. The majority of these children are now in the school system and experiencing major difficulties.

When you consider that this community has a population of only 620, this is a huge proportion of the children in their age group.

And that is only the beginning. The representative said that there were many more children not in the social service system that they felt should be assessed as well.

Although the doctor is willing to return, no funding has yet been identified. As you can well imagine, the representative stressed that there was a critical need for training, program development and delivery of services to these children.

Informally, Inuit representatives at the workshop determined that of the million-dollar enhancement fund recently announced by the Honourable Ethel Blondin Andrew, less than half would go to Inuit.

If the numbers of FASD-affected children (not including adults) is anywhere close to what the reality is in the one community I have just mentioned, funding for support for these children and their families is unlikely to come from the dollars that are soon to flow.

This is nothing short of a huge tragedy, unaddressed for decades, and seemingly very little to hope for in the near future.

While Pauktuutit continues to work on resources and training to increase awareness of FASD and improve prevention and support efforts, the issue requires the urgent attention of many agencies at all levels and a huge influx of financial resources to Inuit.

Veronica Dewar, the president of Pauktuutit, delivered this address to a federal-provincial-territorial meeting of ministers responsible for social services in Yellowknife on Aug. 25. This week, Pauktuutit held a workshop on FASD in Iqaluit.