Souvenir

Hasn't the Ontario government just withdrawn a lot of the financial support for autistics?

dbd33

The way the system works is that the Ontario government will fund "respite workers", they don't pay the parent but the parent signs a form which the worker submits and is paid. The rate isn't great but it's above minimum wage so, in theory, it should be easy enough to find students (especially students of things medical or educational) to do the work. In fact, it isn't, but I think this is very often because the parents make unreasonable demands upon the respite workers, for example, wanting them to participate in therapies rather than just babysitting. One thing you can't use the workers for is driving the child around, that's unfortunate if activities are being curtailed for want of buses, but it's a liability issue.

That's nice. There is a sheltered work facility in suburban Toronto with a restaurant and a car wash and various other facilities to offer work experiences but the child must be very high functioning and the family must always have lived in the local school district. I suppose the best advice I have for the parents of autistic children in Canada is to relocate as soon as the diagnosis is hinted at; by primary school age it's too late to get on the lists for the best facilities. Oh, and get rid of Steven Harper, of course.

dbd33

Oh, all manner of therapies and treatments are available if you want to pay for them. There's a huge and brutal industry peddling aromatherapy, probiotics, patching leaky guts and stamping out gluten.

The traditional term in Canada is "trainably retarded", it's not commonly used anymore but, tbh, I think it's quite apt. Except for Temple Grandin, autistic people are not going to be able to work at anything other than the simplest tasks, they can be trained but not educated.

Canada, btw, has a gruesome history in terms of mental health. Alberta had forced sterilizations until comparitively recently and Montreal was the centre for experiments involving electric shocks. Canada hasn't traditionally been an enlightened country.

Very much so. Funding and facilities are arranged at the school board level and, in Ontario, every little district has four school boards. Whatever money there is has been sliced into very tiny chunks by the politicians before any of it is available to children. A couple of things you can do are to move to right area, for example Etobicoke rather than Mississauga, and to register the child as a Catholic (proportionally the Catholic boards get the same money as the non-Catholic ones but there are actually less Catholic autistics.) Declaring the child to be francophone gets you access to more money but that only works if the child is completely non-verbal or does really speak French. Mastering bureaucracy is key to getting anything at all done.

For the CCRA, attach a copy of the diagnosis to your tax return and wait for them to point out why it's not sufficient. Take the diagnosis and the CCRA letter of complaint to a specialist and get him or her to write a new one.

For local services contact the school boards.


In Ontario, it depends on the school board. Some schools attempt integration, some schools have only autistic children, some have special needs classes within regular schools. Some provide classroom assistants, some don't.

The school boards are obliged, by law, to provide facilities for autistic children until age 21; that's a two edged sword, some schools try to avoid taking such children in the first place so as to avoid being stuck with them. Others will take the child and then pay another board to take the child if he or she becomes difficult. My daughter for example, was in a regular middle school until she was 19, long after she would ordinarilly have gone on to high school. That worked well as the school had enough money to dedicate a teaching assistant to her (the budget was 1.5 people). Eventually the school became concerned about her size relative to the other children and the possibility of her knocking them over so they made a deal with another school board to take her. She's now in a special needs class in that school. One problem with that is that it's over an hour each way and, since she's the only person going that way there's no bus; a taxi carries her.

dbd33

No. The squabble there is over whether or not the government can refuse to pay for a particular therapy, IBI, based on age. They've never funded it after age six though some parents have been lobbying for that. The parents launched an action claiming that age discrimination in medicine is a breach of some right or other to which the supreme court has just replied "bollocks". (Note that I've precised the judgement).

Souvenir

Ta for the clarification. Talking of bollocks, have you ever been to Youngstown OH?

dbd33

Through it, rather than, to it. One would only go to it to do something drearily industrial.

Souvenir

Quite. That's what I was doing. An utterly depressing place. Dead as a community.

TrishP

The age requirement was challenged earlier this year and has now been lifted. I work with autistic kids here and it now means that those who were previously turned down on the grounds of age can reapply. I have several kids whose parents have reapplied - of course, the issue now is that there's a waiting list to get onto the program as it's now relatively underfunded for the number of service users!

dbd33

Eh?

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...=1152309010215

TrishP

That's new! Don't think that information has made it's way to the far north yet - we only have pony express here you know!!!

dbd33

Not sure what the consequences will be but I'm not sure I buy the idea that
ABA works anyway, never mind being a good use of tax dollars.

TrishP

My mind's not quite made up on it - it seems (up here anyway) that they are very quick to diagnose kids with autism and get them on the program that I really wonder if they have autism at all - the statistics make the rpogram look good as the kids improve quickly, but did they really have autism in the first place? I know in the UK they are loathe to diagnose it before age 5 as normal children can display autistic tendencies as part of the maturation process.

alwayssaythanku

Well, i didnt bring up this issue to discuss the merits of ABA or any other mode of educational or medical intervention regarding autism. there are plenty of web forums doing that at the moment.

though ABA has been a godsend for our child as has biomedical intervention as we believe autism is a medical condition and should be treated as such. This has gained a lot of ground in the U.S but i don't know about Canada.

Thus, bringing our child to Canada, and expecting resources will very definitely depend on where we decide to live as health is provincial? that is what most of you are saying? Living in the UK with a unitary system, its quite different, not being a federal system.

I suppose like in the UK, the squeaky wheels get the grease in terms of resources and one has to know the law inside out just like here in the UK.

I would be interested to know how statements of special needs are obtained and if anyone has one for their child entering grade 1. Are they difficult to obtain, do you even have statements of need? Where do you obtain one from, the school board or social services.
thanks

dbd33

What is "biomedical intervention"?

dbd33

No, it's much more specific than just being provincial. It varies by school board within school district.