Organizations that help former residential school students across Canada, including the northern territories, are worried their programs could fold if a major funding source runs out this spring.

Since it was established in 1998, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation has invested about $400 million in federal funding to support community-based mental health and healing programs for those who attended — and in many cases, suffered emotional, physical and sexual abuse — at Indian residential schools across the country.

Groups in all three territories have relied on the Ottawa-based foundation over the past decade to fund projects ranging from one-on-one counselling to cultural programs for former students.

"What we do is provide money for people who in the community are going to get involved with healing programs," foundation executive director Mike DeGagné told CBC News on Tuesday.

"We've supported those programs, several thousand of them over the last 10 years, and we're now down to 135 that we support in a healing network.

But most of those programs could shut down if the foundation's funding, which comes from the federal government, expires on March 31 as scheduled. The government has not indicated if that funding will be renewed.

No backup plan

"We don't really have a backup plan and have [neither] capacity nor funds to have these individuals continue to be employed to deal with the issues and the clients that they have," Edward Wright, who works with Gwich'in communities in the Northwest Territories to hire counsellors, told CBC News.

That concern is shared by David Wilman of the Tukisigiarvik Society, which offers counselling, healing and skills development programs to former students through the Tukisigiarvik Wellness Centre in Iqaluit.

"There are 20 or 22 Inuit-specific projects in Nunavut and Quebec and Labrador, I think all of which are going to be like our own," he said.

"We can't survive beyond March 31 with what we get from the other funding sources."

Last month, Manitoba NDP MP Niki Ashton started a petition urging the federal government to continue funding the Aboriginal Healing Foundation past March 31.

Foundation head hopeful

"Residential school survivors struggle every day with the agonizing trauma from their experience," Ashton said in the House of Commons on Dec. 17.

"The Aboriginal Healing Foundation has been critical in providing the support in terms of counselling for the survivors and their families."

To date, no meetings have been scheduled with federal government officials, but DeGagné said he remains hopeful that the foundation will continue to be funded.

"The healing foundation has managed to put in place a really great network of healing services for a relatively low cost," he said.

"It would be really difficult for the Government of Canada to duplicate that network at the same low cost. So I think all those things are in our favour at this point."