AUTISM SERVICES OVERHAULED
Fee-for-service model gives ‘choice’
Three-year-old Mats Moffatt has spent half his life on a waiting list for autism services, a distinction he shares with 23,000 children around Ontario.
His family has no idea when that wait for publicly funded treatment might end. So, like many other families around the province, they are paying out-of-pocket for therapy that can cost between $60,000 and $80,000 a year.
“When your child gets diagnosed you are told over and over again that early intervention is the key and then you get stuck on a waiting list,” said Mats’s father, Mike Moffatt, an economics professor and senior director of the Smart Prosperity Institute in Ottawa. “There is a massive disconnect between the help needed and what is happening.”
Moffatt and his wife, senior government policy adviser Hannah Rasmussen, are luckier than many. They both have good salaries and they receive help from both of their parents to pay for the treatment, which Moffatt says is making a difference in his non-verbal son’s communications and engagement. They also have a seven-year-old daughter with autism spectrum disorder. For other families, there are few options but to wait.
On Wednesday, the Ontario government announced it was revamping autism services to get rid of the waiting list by giving money directly to parents. That money, up to $20,000 a year to a limit of $140,000 for children who begin treatment before six, will only cover a portion of the costly therapy, however.
Still, Minister of Children, Community and Social Services Lisa MacLeod said the existing system is unfair and cruel to the majority of children who need treatment and are not getting it. Compared with 23,000 children on the waiting list, 8,400 children are receiving treatment in the program.
Under the new program, which is to be phased in in coming months, families would receive money directly to purchase their own services for their children. The money can also be used to purchase technology or respite. A child entering the program before age six would be eligible for up to $20,000 a year to a maximum of $140,000. Children entering after six would be eligible for up to $55,000.
But the changes are also being criticized, including by Bruce McIntosh, who resigned as legislative assistant to Kitchener area MPP Amy Fee, parliamentary assistant to MacLeod.
McIntosh is former head of the Ontario Autism Coalition. Fee has spoken about her struggles to get support for her son with autism.
McIntosh said he resigned because the announcement does not include enough money to cover treatment for some children. “I don’t think this can be defended.”
The reforms also present challenges for CHEO, which is the centre for autism services and diagnosis in the region. The province will give CHEO, and other diagnostic hubs, increased funding to speed up diagnosis.
But the systems created to provide autism services will no longer be provincially funded, which raises questions about what becomes of the 110 staff providing behavioural services that CHEO delivers at sites in Ottawa, Cornwall and Renfrew. A government spokesman said those services currently provided by CHEO and other centres will still exist, but will be offered on a fee-for-service basis.