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“Ontario pledges more money for autistic children”
Friday, August 17, 2007 - 04:58 PM
By: 680News staff and Canadian Press
Toronto - The Ontario government has announced it will provide an additional $12 million in funding for specialized autism treatment. The extra cash will cover treatment for an additional 210 kids.
Ontario’s Minister of Children and Youth Services Mary Anne Chambers said the funding will cover the costs of Intensive Behaviour Intervention treatment for about 1,400 kids.
Chambers said the government has tripled autism funding since taking office, and more than $140 million will be spent during the 2007-08 school year.
Some of the new funding will be used to hire more specialized therapists and provide temporary services to more than 3,000 families across the province.
How the government funds the expensive treatment of autism is expected to become an election issue as more and more families struggle to cope with bills that can easily exceed a year’s salary.
‘We have heard from families that getting a bit of a break from their day-to-day challenges would be enormously helpful,’ Chambers told a group of therapists, parents and autistic children at a Toronto-area treatment centre. ‘Whether at or away from home, relief services facilitated by experienced autism support providers can give families temporary relief from the physical and emotional demands involved in caring for their
children and youth.’
A group called the Ontario Autism Coalition said its 600 members will be pressuring political parties to do more for families with autistic children.
Critics, meanwhile, argued the pre-election funding boost does little to shrink a massive waiting list or address the issue of school-based therapy. Laura Kirby-McIntosh, the mother of a seven-year-old autistic boy and co-founder of the Ontario Autism Coalition, said while she’s pleased a number of families will benefit from the announcement, it
does little to address some of her most pressing concerns.
‘The big piece that we’ve been pushing for is to allow IBI
instructor therapists into the schools,’ she said. ‘We didn’t hear anything about that.’ ‘Right now it’s really on an ad hoc basis. … The vast majority of school boards have a very strong policy barrier saying, ‘Absolutely not. We don’t do therapy in the schools. You cannot come in.”
While schools are required to provide a broad range of Applied Behavioural Analysis therapies, the decision on whether to allow IBI - a highly specialized, one-on-one treatment - remains at the discretion of school boards and principals, said Steise Caswell, a spokeswoman for Education Minister Kathleen Wynne.
Arthur Fleischmann was among those who spent 10 years fighting the government in court to extend IBI therapy beyond age of six in support of his autistic daughter, who is now 12. On hand to support the announcement, he admitted it ‘won’t solve all the problems.’ ‘The bigger news needs to come through education,’ Fleischmann said. ‘There’s some very loose language about being open to ABA methods in the classroom… but ABA has to be wholeheartedly embraced by education, it should be funded by education and it should be provided in schools.’
Fleischmann said he was able to pay out of pocket for most of his daughter’s specialized therapy after she was asked to leave the public school system and suggests she’s made more progress in the last three years than anyone would have ever expected. ‘She has at least average, if not a higher than average IQ. She has a complete vocabulary right down to slang. She’s a normal 12-year-old girl locked in an autistic body,’ he said, adding none of that would have been possible had her therapy ceased at age six.
The issue of funding for autism treatment is expected to play a role in the coming election campaign as more families struggle to cope with medical bills that can easily exceed a year’s salary.
Kirby-McIntosh said her coalition’s 600 members will be pressuring political parties to do more for families with autistic children. The coalition wants IBI instructors currently working with autistic children to be allowed into schools, and for everyone who qualifies for treatment to be provided with it. The group is also pushing for a formal accreditation system and proper training and recruitment of
therapists.
Both the Conservatives and New Democrats have pledged to eliminate the waiting list for IBI therapy and have promised to direct schools and school boards to admit qualified therapists approved to work with autistic children. ‘We’re on the eve of an election, and here are the McGuinty Liberals making more promises to parents with children with autism,’ said New Democrat critic Shelley Martel. ‘These parents, in particular, have seen this before and recognized that this government makes promises and doesn’t deliver.’
Conservative Christine Elliott said her party is the only one that has put forward a comprehensive platform aimed at helping children and families cope with autism right through to adulthood. ‘In my view, the announcements we’ve hears lately about this are really too little too late,’ she said. ‘(The Liberals) are sort of taking a really ad-hoc, simplistic approach to what is really a multifaceted problem.’”
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Awareness 
