Autism program revamp is causing chaos

Re Autism wait list closed in fall, memos show, Feb. 25 My grandson with autism waited 1 1⁄ 2 years for his first therapy program with a publicly funded service provider. Due to extra funding from the previous government, his wait time was reduced to a year and three months for each of his two subsequent programs. The provider is very organized, evaluating each child during and at the end of each program and then automatically put them on waiting list for the next program as appropriate to each individual child. Of course I wish the wait time can be much shorter, but there are just not enough therapy centres and qualified therapists to service the large number of children with autism.

The current government promised to eliminate wait time. Instead of funding more centres and hiring more therapists, the current wait list is stopped altogether. Parents are supposed to apply for funding first (when to apply is still unknown) and then check online on April 1 on a government website to see all the programs available at various service providers (public and private) and then register for the desired program with the desired provider. That means they will be on a waiting list again.

Some already have waited for over a year, and will have to start all over again. Besides, some parents just don’t have the time, resources or ability to do the research. Nothing but chaos, confusion and frustrations and senseless waste of more taxpayers’ money just to overthrow the existing policy. How much more taxpayers’ money will be needed to fix this blunder? Lily Chen, Markham