The NWT government says it has increased the sums payable per day to families who foster or adopt children in the territory.
According to the GNWT, this is the first such increase since 2018.
Health minister Lesa Semmler said the increase was an attempt to “bridge the gap in rising cost of living” and also to “remove barriers preventing extended family caregivers from supporting children outside their family home.”
The amounts paid vary according to community. A document on the Foster Family Coalition’s website shows the old rates and a page on the territory’s website lists the new ones.
Taken together, those documents illustrate the changes for every community.
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Inuvik’s daily foster care rate, for example, went from $33 a day to $52 according to the two documents. Tuktoyaktuk’s rate went from $49 to $52.
Hay River’s rate went from $27 to $41, while Fort Smith’s increased from $30 to $39.
In Yellowknife, Ndılǫ and Dettah, the rate went from $24 to $33.
The territory says the Community Price Index – a mechanism worked out by the NWT Bureau of Statistics that compares prices between communities – accounts for the difference in rate paid in each place.
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The new rates kicked in on March 1. The changes were announced earlier this week.
“The cost of supporting children in care has continually risen since the last foster care rate increase in 2018. The difference in the rising cost of living and foster care has made it challenging for foster parents and adoptive parents who qualify for a subsidized adoption to support children so that they can become successful,” the GNWT stated in a press release.
Each basic foster care payment is supplemented by a top-up based on the child’s age. Those top-ups have also increased slightly.
The new top-up for a foster child aged up to five is $6 per day. It’s $5 per day for a child aged six to 12, and $7 per day for a child aged 13 to 18.
Additional funding is available if a child has “a disability or a unique level of care need.”
