Ontario government should overhaul its autism plan

If you read no further than its self-congratulatory press release, the Ontario government’s plan for helping autistic children and their families looks like an enormous advance in a great humanitarian cause.

Nearly three times as many children will receive funding for life-changing therapy than is now the case and within 18 months the horrendous wait lines for intervention will vanish, the Progressive Conservatives promise. What’s not to like?

It turns out there’s a lot. If you go beyond the press release and inspect the plan’s full details, you’ll see it’s filled with gaping holes. The biggest one is that in order to help more children, this government will actually reduce its assistance for others.

To be sure, what this government is trying to achieve is laudable. A developmental disorder characterized by difficulties with communication and social interaction, autism presents a huge challenge for — and places enormous pressures on — thousands of Ontario families.

While an estimated 40,000 children in Ontario have autism, only 8,400 currently receive services while 23,000 are languishing on the wait list for behavioural therapies. At least 2,400 children are waiting simply for a diagnosis.

Those numbers are scandalous. The status quo is unacceptable in the kind of compassionate society Ontario claims to be. At the very least, Children, Community and Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod deserves high marks for tackling this embarrassment.

MacLeod’s solution is to provide the funding for therapy directly to parents and let them choose how the money’s spent. Her hope is that this will clear the enormous backlog of autistic children awaiting help. Considering that early therapy can be hugely beneficial and even save money down the road if that timely intervention reduces the need for future assistance, there’s wisdom in her approach.

Where the plan rightly starts raising alarms is its budget for therapy. It isn’t budging. It stands at $325 million this year and that’s exactly where it will remain.

This means the government intends to distribute the same amount of money for therapy programs to a substantially larger group of people. The same-sized pie will be sliced into more, smaller pieces. Moreover, by shifting the focus to early intervention for young children, this government is to a degree providing support on the basis of age, not need.

Young children on the low end of the autism spectrum will receive as much government assistance as older children with far greater needs; perhaps even more. No wonder many parents of autistic children have denounced the PC plan.

To be sure, the government can point out that Minister MacLeod’s parliamentary assistant is Amy Fee, the mother of two autistic children who was a vocal advocate for the province’s autistic children before becoming Kitchener-South Hespeler’s MPP.

But whatever credibility Fee adds to the government’s plan, the sudden resignation this week of her aide, Bruce McIntosh, in protest of the initiative will increase public doubts about it.

He’s also the parent of two autistic children and the former president of the Ontario Autism Coalition. When he complains that the government’s $140,000 in lifetime funding for autistic children could be used up in two years of costly therapy, people should listen.

We concede that the PCs face the formidable task of improving services while eliminating the provincial deficit and not raising taxes. Where does the public expect them to find even more money for autistic therapy?

That said, this government has come up with a deeply flawed solution to a very complex problem. It should heed its critics and overhaul its own overhaul of autism services.