TORONTO — Dozens of parents of children with autism are at the Ontario legislature today demanding the government reverse a decision to defund intensive therapy for children five and older.
The Liberal government recently announced a new Ontario Autism Program with $333 million in funding, which will integrate Intensive Behavioural Intervention and Applied Behavioural Analysis therapies, currently in two separate streams.
But the changes include limiting IBI to children between two and four, which the children and youth services minister says is based on advice from experts who encourage focusing on children in that developmental window.
The government says it will mean 16,000 more children will receive services — mostly ABA — and that IBI wait times will go from a current average of 2 1/2 years to six months by 2021.
But parents say that will come at the expense of children who are five or will turn five in the next year or two, since they will no longer qualify for IBI.
Both Kristen Ellison and Heather Bourdon say their children have received ABA therapy in the past, but to little or no effect.
"I am being robbed of seeing my son's full potential to save a buck and to me, that is disgusting and unforgivable," said Ellison, a single mother of a non-verbal five-year-old boy.
"This is the worst thing that could have happened to our family, short of him getting cancer or dying because I will never know what his true potential was or what it could have been," she said.
"Realizing I may never hear, 'Mom, I love you' is enough to kill a mother inside."
