According to an internal assessment from the provincial government obtained by the Canadian Press, most of the children in Ontario waiting for publicly funded core autism therapy will not be receiving it any time soon.
Days into his new role this spring as Minister of Children, Community and Social Services, Michael Parsa was given a transition binder with information on the files he now oversees.
The document, obtained through a Freedom of Information request, provides a much fuller picture of the Ontario Autism Program than the province has publicly disclosed so far.
The current program budget is $667 million, but that will only serve about 20,000 children in core clinical therapies, according to the document.
Natalie McLellan, Program Manager at the John McGivney Children's Centre, says families have suspected for a little while that funds have been flowing slower than the original estimate.
"And as service providers what we've been trying to put in place while families wait for their core clinical funding is a community around them that can support them in those foundational skills," she continued. "So we're really looking at what we can do in the community."
McLennan says we're well set up in Windsor and Essex County with a lot of community partners and providers that can be accessed.
She says the therapies that fall under core clinical services of the Ontario Autism Program include applied behavioural analysis, speech and language pathology, and occupational therapy.
"And those three therapies really help answer some of the needs that are identified when a child has a diagnosis of autism. Applied behavioural analysis looks at the science of behaviour, and allows us to find the most effective ways to teach new skills to children."
McLennan says there are huge numbers of children looking for service through the OAP, and when the program shifted to this new model the numbers were a lot smaller.
She says the latest diagnostics have shown that 1 in 55 children will be diagnosed with autism.
"But that is a spectrum right, so some children will have a lot of needs and that early more intensive therapy can make a big difference, and there are children who will still benefit from the support that occurs throughout our community," she said.
There are about 60,000 children seeking services through the program in the province, and about 7,000 more are added to the list each year.
- with files from AM800's The Shift with Patty Handysides and the Canadian Press