Following recent blowback to Ontario’s autism support changes, the province is rolling out new money to help students on the spectrum.
Ontario’s education minister, Lisa Thompson, announced the new funding Monday, before hundreds of children see less funding as a result of the previously announced changes.
Thompson said the additional funding will see school boards get an average of $12,300 for each new student with autism entering the school system in the remaining months of this school year.
"This funding will allow school boards to make sure there are proper supports available during the transition from therapy to school," she announced in Ottawa.
However, autism and education advocates, including some parents, say the announcement does little to address a problem of the government’s own making -- and attempts to turn teachers into therapists.
Windsor mother Melissa Grass tells CTV News Monday’s announcement leaves more questions than answers for her family.
Grass has a nine-year-old daughter who is on the spectrum and doesn’t think there will be enough funding now to ensure a smooth transition from therapy to the classroom.
“I’m happy that they’re addressing that they need more funds and they need more education for the teachers on how to deal without children but, again, it leaves more questions than answers,” says Grass. “I still don’t understand how they can say $12,000 is going to help a child in the school system because it’s not.”
The government is aiming to clear a wait list of 23,000 kids by spreading an existing pot of money to all children diagnosed with autism, instead of fully funding the treatment.
Families will get up to $20,000 per year for treatment for children under six and $5,000 a year for children six to 18 -- with the maximum amounts available to families with incomes under $55,000 -- but intensive therapy can cost up to $80,000 a year.
Along with the Glass family in Windsor, many are worried they’ll be unable to make up the difference to keep paying for full-time therapy.
Thompson also announced that the government will fully subsidize an ASD-specific additional qualification course for teachers, and an after-school skills development pilot project for students with autism will be expanded to all 72 school boards.
Parents and educators have been raising the alarm about what the autism funding changes will mean for the school system. Sam Hammond, president of the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, said more funding is needed for educational assistants -- the classroom staff who are trained in behavioural therapy.
"To push this onto teachers rather than providing the supports for educational professionals is extremely troubling," he said. "They created a crisis with their changes to the autism funding and (applied behaviour analysis) therapy and now it seems like they're simply downloading their obligations...to support these kids to school boards."
The Ontario Public School Boards' Association called Thompson's announcement a "step in the right direction," but said many boards already outspend their special education budget.
The average $12,300-per-student funding is normally available to boards based on head counts twice a year -- the next date is March 31 -- but the government said it will give boards that money for any student with autism that registers between April 1 and June.
The after-school program expansion will cost $6.1 million for the 2019-20 school year, and the subsidized course will cost $1 million per year, Thompson's office said. It would not provide an estimate for how much additional per student funding will be provided because it is waiting to see how many of those students register for school. Funding to the Geneva Centre for Autism to provide online training opportunities for educators is also being doubled, to $2 million.
— with files from Allison Jones/The Canadian Press
