Parents still fighting to get their medically fragile children nursing care in Ontario schools

Every day since the beginning of the school year, Tonya Martin has attended a Toronto junior kindergarten class.

It's the only way Cayden, her medically fragile four-year-old, can get education and participate in the classroom as the province faces a shortage of nurses.

Martin says it's not ideal, but she still considers herself fortunate.

"I know a lot of families have not been afforded the same flexibility."

Students like Cayden require one-on-one care by a trained person at all times. Nurses are needed to attend school with medically fragile children to keep them safe, administer medications and help them eat. But a province-wide nursing shortage means families have been left scrambling to recruit their own help, spending hours navigating the rules and in some cases not having their kids attend school at all.

The Ministry of Health says it has recently announced $61 million in investments to support the recruitment and retention of nurses, including adding 800 nursing positions in areas of need across the province and new spaces to nursing programs starting in the fall of  2021.

But with school underway, parents and groups like the Ontario Disability Coalition worry those efforts won't move fast enough to ensure kids with disabilities get an education this year.