Improve Access to Ontario Health Services
To support children and youth with ALL disabilities ask candidates from all parties to take the Ontario Disability Coalition pledge. Links to print these documents and more details on are found here: Ask your MPP to take the Pledge – “Trust Parents & Caregivers”
Reasons to sign the Pledge and provide Barrier Free Rehabilitation
Ontario Disability Coalition Direct Funding Pledge
Meanwhile our Disabled Children and Youth continue to be neglected.
Ontario’s current model of Local Health Integration Network “LHIN” in-school therapy is rated an “F” by parents. The government’s boasts that this will improve with their ‘Special Needs Strategy’. All they are doing is adding service navigators we feel this will fail as NO additional funding has been provided! It is a disaster waiting to happen.
Ontario should be investing in Physiotherapists, Occupational therapists, as well as Speech and Language therapists. They need to work hands on with children and youth with ALL disabilities. Many Special Needs Children, Youth and Adults can have a useful life and given the chance will be contributing members of society. Children with multiple disabilities deserve substantial better care.
Champlain LHIN CEO agrees that therapy is consultative! Therapy provided is not meant to help a child!
Special Needs Strategy work has been going on for far too long – 4 years to be exact – with zero solutions or improvements felt by families. Although we recognized it was started with good intentions by the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, over time it has sadly left families in crisis.
We feel the special needs strategy has been a waste of 10 million dollars, a waste of time, and a waste of public funding and resources.
In a number of areas across Ontario, the decision makers from the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care (CCAC/LHIN), lead agencies such as those who provide preschool speech and language services, the Ministry of Education (District School Boards) and the Ministry of Children and Youth (Children Treatment Centres) met each other endlessly in order to drive change and improvements and reach local consensus. However, they could not agree who would handle the funding. No party was willing to give up control of services, resources, jobs and, most importantly, funding in order to improve the fragmented and broken system for children and youth with special needs. The whole process was ruined by GREED.
Look to Windsor for an example of this. No agreement could be reached and the Ministry of Children and Youth had to send in a mediator.
Sadly there is still no resolution, leaving families in limbo. Some families are unaware of what services are available to them, while others sit on a waiting list. Years of chaos have continued for families and their children without complete coordinated services.
Parents should be capable of managing their children’s rehabilitation funding and may even be able to purchase more rehabilitation services privately. Parents could also choose to use their local Children Treatment Centre if they preferred direct service. They can’t right now, but they deserve this choice.
Ontario voters care about special needs children and youth, and all families expect fiscally responsible and equitable services and resources for children and youth with ALL disabilities. It is 2018 after all.
We, families with children and adults with disabilities, feel like we are climbing Mount Everest. We are just at different stages of the climb. When we bump into the right advocates, they help us move up to the next level and for a brief moment, we can admire the view, close our eyes and breathe. But all too soon, we have to resume the long, lonely ascent.
With the right supports, it could be more like this:
instead of this
#NoChildLeftBehind #onpoli #SpecialNeedsTragedy
The Hon Michael Coteau MPP, Ministry of Children and Youth Services has invested $500 Million Dollar into Autism Services. While this is welcome wonderful news, they are leaving out thousands of children with disabilities in Ontario.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNUDHR) was established by the United Nations in 1948. The Declaration outlines international laws that protect individuals’ civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights from birth, and are stemmed from ideologies of dignity and autonomy.
These Articles establishes that parents and children with all disabilities have the same rights as parents and children with no such needs.
The UNUDHR Article 23 (2) states that, “everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.” However, in relation to inequitable therapies and caregiving roles, parents of children with disabilities have dual roles as parents and caregivers, meaning they work as unpaid medical care providers. These unpaid caregivers are providing therapy, nursing, medical, and social work care 24 hours a day. Thus, the health and social system in Ontario is taking advantage of parents’ free labour to fill gaps in funding and services that should otherwise be provided by the Ministry of Child & Youth Services and Children Treatment Centres.
Further, Article 25, outlines that children with disabilities, and the caregivers of children with disabilities have a right to the same standard of living as everyone else: “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of [themselves] and of [their] family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability … or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond [their] control.”
However, parent surveys unveiled how they and their children’s human rights are constantly violated through Children Treatment Centres withholding and limiting access to therapy. One of the key ways caregivers and their children are discriminated against in the rehabilitation system is in how the child’s needs are evaluated based on whether they can improve functional within a 6-week period compared to another less disabled child, rather than an evaluation based on the child’s individual needs. Most surveyed participants had difficulties in accessing timely and adequate rehabilitation therapies though, their children met the definition of children with disabilities as set by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. Inability to access timely therapies and equipment results in social isolation, avoidable health inequities and inequalities, and a lower standard of living for children and their parents. Not being able to access therapist presents a barrier from accessing needed equipment. Children should not need to prove they can use the equipment before they get it, we know that children need time and practice to learn to use equipment such as walkers, wheelchairs, communication devices, to name just a few.
On Thursday, December 7th, 2017 the Minister Michael Coteau released a statement of the investment of $500 million dollars into Autism services. Part of this investment is for a direct funding model for behaviour therapies for children diagnosed with Autism. We have known that this announcement was coming out for months. For months, we have asked this Ministry to ensure the policy framework included ALL children with disabilities in Ontario and to ensure that they ALL have equitable access to ALL therapies (OT/PT/SPL/AAC) through the same direct funding model. Again, thousands of children in Ontario continue not to have access to therapy and equipment. In the end, so many children are left behind.
We urge you to tweet Hon Michael Coteau MPP Ministry of Children and Youth Services / Anti-Racism Directorate at @Coteau, you may also contact his office by phone at 416-212-7432 and by email at mcoteau.mpp@liberal.ola.org
Lynda Reusse, CoFounder, Ontario Disability Coalition
Sherry Caldwell, CoFounder, Ontario Disability Coalition
Manda Krpan Mesic, CoFounder, Ontario Disability Coalition
Geoffrey Feldman, Director, Ontario Disability Coalition
Samadhi Mora-Severino (PhD student), Advisor, Ontario Disability Coalition Paula Tzouanakis Anderson, Advisor, Ontario Disability Coalition
Contact: Tel: 416-903-5067 Email: OntarioDisabilityCoalition@gmail.com
The Ontario Disability Coalition (the “ ODC”) is holding a press conference at Queen’s Park on Monday, December 4, 2017 from 1:00-1:30 PM, to raise awareness of the crisis in the Rehabilitation Services in Ontario for Children and Youth with ALL Disabilities.
Co-Founders Sherry Caldwell, and Lynda Reusse will release the results of a survey on experiences of parents with children and youth with special needs when accessing Rehabilitation Services across Ontario. Samadhi Mora-Severino and her son Ethan will share their experiences.
Families of Children and Youth with ALL Disabilities should have a choice of Direct Funding or Direct Service options to eradicate wait lists and have timely access to hands on Therapy across various types of therapies. Currently, the system centered framework provides various levels of funding with limited types of therapies only provided in short treatment block. Every Ontarian deserves to be treated equally and be provided with the opportunities to be able to live without discrimination of the services, and facilities that they need to survive, thrive and succeed.
The ODC is calling upon the Ontario government to extend direct funding for therapy to ALL children with ALL disabilities. Adequate therapy funding is needed to meet the needs of all children, regardless of diagnosis and severity.
Specific concerns include:
Electronic Media Kit
Lynda Reusse CoFounder, Ontario Disability Coalition
Sherry Caldwell CoFounder, Ontario Disability Coalition
Manda Krpan Mesic CoFounder, Ontario Disability Coalition
Geoff Feldman Director, Ontario Disability Coalition
Samadhi Mora-Severino Advisor, Ontario Disability Coalition
Not knowing the breakdown of the funding formula does makes it appear like their is an inequity but these points must be made as the real information and funding formula is hidden from the Public.
The points are:
There is a Rehabilitation crisis for children with ALL disabilities in Ontario and it is imperative to get action from our Government. Families and concerned citizens are planning to share with you our experiences with rehabilitation services across Ontario. The Ontario Disability Coalition is discussing the effects of the erosion of Human Right’s by the Ontario Government for people (especially children) with a disability.
We will be also be releasing the results of a recent survey on the experiences of parents with children with special needs when dealing with the Children’s Treatment Centres (CTC’s) across Ontario. In addition, we will share our vision for families to have choice and control in relation to their disability services.
Every Ontarian deserves to be treated equally and be provided with the opportunities to be able to live without discrimination of the services, and facilities that they need to survive, succeed and thrive.
If any of you would like additional information please feel free to reach out to us ONTARIODISABILITYCOALITION@GMAIL.COM
