PAULATUK - After years of dealing with temporary, remote or under-qualified professionals to cope with the social issues in their community, Paulatuk residents demanded a full-time counsellor for their hamlet.

Kathryn Boyd is now six months into her contract as the first full-time counsellor Paulatuk has ever had, filling a position jointly created by The Beaufort Delta Health and Social Services Authority and the Paulatuk Community Corporation (PCC).

Gilbert Thrasher Sr., PCC Chair, said it was important to residents that their counsellor be from away, bringing a neutral perspective into the community of about 300.

"A community counsellor, I think, was needed for quite some time. We've had some people, but they did not hold any kind of counselling papers so we finally have one that can cover that work," he said. "The big reason behind it is because we have quite a big number of residential school survivors and we thought it was very important that that generation gets covered and also the next generation that might have been affected by those survivors."

Boyd's work isn't limited to residential school issues. The Ontarian holds a master's degree in creative art therapy and provides one-on-one counselling for all ages, across a broad range of subject matter from abuse to addictions to anger management to parenting to dating and healthy relationships. Boyd said she plans to offer more workshops to address those needs that community members themselves identified in an Inuvialuit health survey last year, including more family violence awareness projects coming up this week.

"Prevention and outreach is a big part of what I do here," Boyd said, adding she also visits Angik School once a week to act as a student counsellor in addition to her regular daily office hours.

"I find a lot of people really are looking for someone to listen and hear them," she said. "I enjoy connecting with people. I enjoy unearthing the stories of strength and resilience and hope that people have for their lives. People are managing lots of challenges. The reality is, people are struggling financially and there are so many issues that affect people in the territories."

To deal with such a wide variety of issues across all age groups, Boyd uses a narrative style of counselling that involves listening to people's stories and externalizing their problems.

"If I come to counselling, often I'm feeling overpowered by the problem or that I'm worthless, or that I'm an angry person," she explained. "So rather than, 'I'm an angry person,' 'How is anger influencing my life? And what kind of relationship do I want to have with anger in my life?' I find that's a helpful way for kids, teens, adults, elders, for everybody."

Boyd, who often works with the community's social worker, said she believes residents value her work, but said she still has a lot of work to do to help residents use the community counselling program to its full potential.

Thrasher said it's still too early to tell whether Boyd's work, seen as a pilot project within the regional health authority, will have a lasting positive impact on community members. But so far, he said, so good.

"I've been following some of her programs and you can see the good side, the help it's giving out to those that need it," he said.

It's important now, Thrasher added, for the community to have an outsider's point of view when it comes to counselling but he said that eventually residents would like to see someone from Paulatuk run those types of programs.

"Whether it's in the health centre or the counselling department, one day we would like to see some students return and bring back some professional background with them to their own community."

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