Ontario autism services enrolments decline in some weeks despite large waitlist: docs

Ontario's progress in giving children with autism access to government-funded core therapy has slowed so significantly that at times the number of kids enrolled is actually declining, despite a ballooning wait-list, according to documents obtained by The Canadian Press.

Ontario's progress in giving children with autism access to government-funded core therapy has slowed so significantly that at times the number of kids enrolled is actually declining, despite a ballooning wait-list, according to documents obtained by The Canadian Press.

Progress updates on the Ontario Autism Program show a widening gulf between the number of children seeking services — 73,031 at the time of the most recent data from the end of June — and the number receiving funding for key therapies, which was at that time 14,113.

The enrolment and funding for core services, which includes applied behaviour analysis and speech-language pathology, has been slowing over the past year, but information obtained through a freedom-of-information request shows there are now weeks in which the number of kids being served actually decreases.

The ministry tracks progress every two weeks, and from May 29 to June 12, for example, the number of children with an active funding agreement for core services declined by 70. In that same time period, 491 more children were added to the waiting list for services.

"There's going to be a reckoning," said Alina Cameron, president of the Ontario Autism Coalition. "You're going to have the community clue in on this, and they're going to be very upset, because what this means is that that estimated wait time of five to seven years just got longer."

The wait time is an autism coalition estimate, not a government figure. Families on the wait-list are not given an indication of how long their wait will be, though many have asked, as they try to calculate how long they can afford to pay out-of-pocket for therapy in the meantime.

A ministry spokesperson said decreases in the number of children enrolled in core clinical services "could be due to more children/youth exiting the program (due to aging out or other reasons) than enrolling ... in the two-week period."