It's Been a Long, Long While...

It's been a long, long while since I've posted on here.  Why?  Well, if you haven't been around, you might see something different.  Or check out the logo above.

What happened?

We moved.  Far.  Thousands of kilometres, in fact. 

You might think me crazy to uproot the entire family and move to the other side of the country... but hear me out, then you might change your mind.

I posted quite some time ago about the end of early intervention for A.

In that post, I asked... what to do?  Well, we figured it out.  We left.  We followed the services... and there are many to be had in Alberta.

Let's start with A.  Once IBI ends in Ontario, there is very little in the way of supports.  Yes, you can get the ABA program in Ontario now, but they are barred from entering the schools and there are waiting lists.  The quality of service is quite variable and the treatment protocol is indirect; it is a consultative service mostly geared to help parents cope.  Supports in the schools are even worse.  Every school board has its own policies in terms of what placements are available (and even when offered they may be full).  Boards have "specialists" but you're lucky if your kid's teacher gets a consult once a year let alone direct service.  In short, it sucks.  Life after IBI is not so good if after it's done, your kid still needs a lot of help.

Let's begin with schooling.  Ontario schools do a very poor job of educating kids with ASD.  Yes, there are some schools and some teachers and some principals who really do try, but they have no training (a weekend workshop on autism does not an expert make), and staffing levels can change at a moment's notice.  The biggest issue in Ontario is that special education grants go to the school board and there is no accountability in how that money is spent.

There are private school options in Ontario if you live in Toronto or Ottawa.  Tuition cost?  $56,000 per year.  Not affordable by a long shot.  What about in Calgary?  Yes, there is, and good news, it's $12,000 per year.  How is this possible?  One very important reason.  Alberta funds private schools and not only that, special education grants are tied to the student and go directly to the school in which they attend.  How about that?  What a logical idea.  The money that the government allocates for my kid is ... spent on my kid.  Neat.

Moving onto T on the school front.  In Ontario T would have half-time junior kindergarten (with us not living in a designated area for full day yet) in a classroom with 25 kids with zero support.  Here, T gets to attend a specialized pre-school with 10 kids, a teacher's aide, and a speech pathologist or occupational therapist in the room all the time.  No, not a once a year consult, but like direct therapy because these therapists are on staff at the school.  Not the board.  The school.  And we pay nothing for this, because guess what?  The school gets a grant for T and yet again, it's used to educate him.  Huh.

What about other supports?  There's lots:

• Respite supports so Mom and I can go out on dates or have time to ourselves.
• Overnight help for A when her sleeping is sucking.
• Community support to allow A and T to enjoy things typical kids do like swimming lessons or classes.
• Direct speech language, occupational and physiotherapy to help the kids development.
• Board Certified Behaviour Analyst to work with before mentioned team to work on behavioural issues and general learning.
• Support to hire one-on-one aides to work with the kids on skills.

There's no waiting list.  There's no bloated government bureaucracy that controls the funds or provides services at stupidly high rates when the private sector could do it more efficiently.  It's all about parent choice.

Still wondering why we moved?  We're not.  Well, maybe when it's -30 degrees outside.  But otherwise, not so much! 
 

Shame on Me and Shame on Us

A lot of attention has been given to the recent ruling at the Supreme Court of Canada.  It recently ruled that school boards in Canada must provide adequate services to children with disabilities and cannot justify not providing those services due to budgetary pressures.

From the Supreme Court Decision:

This declaration of purpose is an acknowledgment by the government that the reason all children are entitled to an education, is because a healthy democracy and economy require their educated contribution.  Adequate special education, therefore, is not a dispensable luxury.  For those with severe learning disabilities, it is the ramp that provides access to the statutory commitment to education made to all children in British Columbia.   

The synopsis of this ruling is that Jeffrey Moore had dyslexia, and the school board did not provide adequate help.  As a result, Moore went to a private school.  The SCC is awarding his family full costs, and the school board has to pay.  It will be interesting to see what implications this has for ABA provision in Ontario schools.

The Globe and Mail does not concur:

The Supreme Court of Canada has opened a Pandora’s box for public school boards by finding that a British Columbia school district discriminated against a dyslexic child when, during a financial crisis, it closed a special-education centre that provided him intensive help in learning to read. From here on, schools, school boards or provinces could be forced to bleed other programs to meet court-ordered educational standards for special-needs students.

And it concludes:

It makes the court’s unanimous ruling more out of touch that the boy’s public education unfolded between 1991 and 1994, during and after a recession marked by across-the-board restraint, and finally, the overcoming of Canada’s deficit. Many political choices went into those years, and similar choices await today; governments, accountable to voters, should be the ones making those choices. The court overstepped its authority.

I'm ashamed of us for thinking this way.  This is the old mantra, it costs too much, and we can't afford it.  Yet, as I have written before, no one seems to mind that we spent billions of dollars at the end of someone's life in hospital instead of acknowledging death is imminent... no one would allow that.  So why do we allow school boards to write children off because of cost?

Most of all, I'm ashamed of myself.  Ashamed that, without children on the spectrum, I would have agreed with the article.  Shame on me.

Why is this decision such a victory?  Another quote from the Toronto Star, on education in Ontario:

Denise Martins, the principal at Danforth Collegiate, said the school is doing the best it can based upon the staffing provided to us. The school’s support program includes one full-time and one part-time teacher, a child and youth worker and special needs assistant, and a social skills class runs over the lunch hour.

But Ford says it’s not the school or teachers that are to blame; she faults the board for not providing adequate resources. She says her son is being bullied by other students.

Other parents echo Ford’s frustrations with Ontario’s school system: one mother says she stopped working because of daily calls to pick up her son; another spent the night washing ink off her Grade 9 son after he was accosted by older boys; some parents decide to transfer their children to private school, spending thousands in tuition.

Here's the reason why school boards should not be able to hide behind budget constraints... as quoted by Ms. Martins.  They are "doing the best based on the staffing provided to us."  That's a cop-out.  This SCC decision says that children are entitled to an education, and "the school board's best" may not be adequate anymore.

This decision does not reverse Auton, but it least it gives us hope for children getting what they need for a real education in school.

 

This Could Be You

Colleen Cunningham, a mother in Sarnia, is facing my greatest fear.  Her son Nathan, now 21, has cerebral palsy and has severe disability.  He requires 24 hour care.  You can read more about her story here.

Based on what I can glean from this article, Colleen is alone, aging, and her own health is failing.  Her son will never be independent.  But there is no room for him in a group home.  Colleen's desperate solution is to abandon him in respite care, forcing the government to intervene in his care.

My heart aches for this mother.  No one wants to abandon their children, and the irony is that Nathan could probably remain at home if Mom had some supports, but there is "no money" in agency budgets.  Other support services in Ontario, such as "Special Services at Home", have been frozen since 2007 or earlier.  You can apply for such services and be awarded money, but you are wait listed.  As families give up their funding, the funding is clawed back by the government.  Why we are paying bureaucrats to collect names and determine pretend grant amounts while people with disabilities get no support is beyond me.

Do you have children with disabilities?  This could be you someday.

Children with severe autism are transitioned into a school system that is not designed for their needs, and inclusion zealots are happy we do this.  Inclusion is cheaper and better for the child, according to them.

Here is the harsh reality for many children with severe autism.  While they are included in classrooms, they may, if they are lucky, meet some children in schools who are willing to be their "friends".  I don't discount how happy this will make some parents, including me.  But at age 21, those elementary school friends are long gone and are probably replaced by support workers.  Inclusion is a happy place for the time, but that friendship is temporary and does not help the child gain long-term skills needed for independent living.  My own daughter A has friends close to her age, but it is not an even relationship.  It takes a special person to be friends with A, and as A ages and becomes developmentally further behind (at least socially), these special people will become harder to find.

School is a place for academic learning and socialization.  Yet very few schools have any formal teaching for socialization because the vast majority of children come to school with basic skills and learn the ropes as they go.  For many kids with autism, academic skills beyond literacy, writing and numeracy are not very important.  Life skills, or adaptive skills, are much more important.  I would rather spend a day teaching A how to use a public washroom then say teaching her about native Canadian villages.  But schools aren't designed to teach kids about using public washrooms, because most children don't need special training to learn this skill.

Parents, ask yourselves - when school is done at 21, are you comfortable knowing your child learned all they could to be as independent as possible?  If not, in my opinion, time was wasted.  Because in the end, the responsibility for the child falls back to you.  There is no schooling after age 21 in most jurisdictions, and in Ontario at least, getting into a group home is no easy task.

I admire parents who say they "accept the autism" and "just enjoy their children".  I think sometimes parents need to let kids be kids, disability or not.  But we also have a duty to our children, and for our own sanity, to prepare our children to be independent.  To me, that means making the most of every opportunity, and it means the public school system is no place for A.

Early intervention is touted as a way to save money by "teaching children how to learn" and allowing them to achieve "average functioning".  Yet very few children do so.  In Ontario's IBI program, the proportion of children meeting average functioning is only 11% of discharges.  There are also no studies indicating if children in this program retain their level of functioning after they enter the school system.  In other words, IBI gets them to a certain level of functioning, but we don't know if they can maintain that level once the intensive supports are removed in a school setting.

I don't want Colleen's story to be mine in 16 or so years from now.  Do you?

Inclusion is no solution - children need life skill teaching from discharge.  It's too bad Ontario's public education model will never put the individual's needs beyond that of its employees.  Shame on us for letting it happen.

Toronto Board of Education and Ontario's Double Standard

The Toronto District School Board has decided to follow thorough on its plans to eliminate 87% of Education Assistants.  Over 400 education assistants will be laid off, and over 400 early childhood educators (ECEs) will be hired to replace them.  ECEs are required by Ontario law to deliver the new full-day kindergarten program.

Don't feel too bad for the educational assistants though.  The government has offered to hire them as ECEs if they will complete their ECE training at a local college within two years.  

I have posted before on how unfair this is to special needs students.  Don't be fooled - the lack of assistance for students will result in more students being sent home or attending for partial school days only.  Parents will have to fight more than ever for services that should be provided to them freely.

If that is not unfair enough, consider the double standard the government applies to early childhood education and special education.  Apparently, to work with four and five year old children in an educational setting, you need a one or two year diploma to qualify you to deliver this education.

Colleges in Ontario have offered a good program in Autism and Behavioural Science for years now, yet no educational staff who work with children with autism require this diploma.  Tell me why an untrained educational assistant is qualified to work with children with autism, yet that same EA requires a year or more of training to work with young, typical children?

There is no choice for children with autism in Ontario.  Either the child is home-schooled (partially or full-time), the parents are on the hook for the full cost of their education, or parents must flee the jurisdiction.  Don't worry though, little Jonny is getting a fully trained early childhood educator and can attend school all day.  It'll save his parents a bundle on child care.  What's not to like about that?  

Latest Toronto School Board Plan Proves No Accountability in Special Education

The Toronto District School Board is considering a proposal to balance its budget by reducing educational assistants by 87% (reducing 493.5 full time equivalent positions to just 63.5 positions).  The stated reasoning is to hire 400 early childhood educators to fulfill the board's requirements in implementing full-day learning for four and five year old students.

Special education funding is very seriously misused in Ontario.  Although money is allocated for special education, it is given to each school board to do with as it pleases (a fact stated by an education official in the above article:

A spokesman for the education ministry, Grahame Rivers, said funding for the TDSB has increased since 2003.

“Ultimately, it is the TDSB’s decision how to best allocate resources in Toronto schools,” he said.

 Funding is increasing, but funding does not follow each student.  It is allocated based on the needs of the board.  In this way, "special education funding" is a joke - there is no accountability in the way the funds are spent.  Why even bother having distinct funding streams if the boards can spend any way they please?


How is it fair that hundreds of students with special needs are having support staff taken away so that hundreds of four and five year old children have a longer school day?  Schools will do what they can, but the result of this change will result in most students not attending school or attending with reduced hours.  Luckily A is not yet in school, but if she were (and she is old enough to go into early years education) there is no way she could attend without support and actually learn anything.


Some of you may disagree with me on this, but I don't even believe full-day early learning is needed.  I believe it is a back-door way of getting free childcare in Ontario so that parents get a free ride.


Interestingly, a study in the United States on their Head Start program (which includes pre-school education, nutrition and other services for low income families) states that:

The benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population as a whole.

Obviously we can't compare this directly to Ontario's program since in the United States kindergarten is not full-time.  However, early learning at the four-year old level does not appear (in this study) to influence academic trajectory.

Ironically, parents who try to assist the schools by trying to provide staff of their own are re-buffed and educational assistants will grieve any attempt to put in staff because that person is taking the job away from a unionized EA.  A parent cannot put their own staff in place to help their child, but they also cannot rely on the school to do so either, especially with so few EAs available (now just 64 education assistants for a city of almost three million people).


So for parents of typical children who are four and five:

• They pay taxes
• Both parents can work with free child-care, a.k.a. full day learning
• Extra income = more opportunities
• And if you're in Toronto... special academy schools for kids in music and leadership

For parent of children with special needs:

• They pay taxes
• Their children must attend fewer hours or not at all
• One parent must remain home to home-school or be around when the school ejects the student, or must work full-time to pay for private education
• Parents cannot pay for an EA themselves even if they have the means due to union grievances
• The dollars spent per child for regular children are not refunded to them - they pay the same tax for less service

In short, if you are a regular kid, the system works.  If you're not, you're screwed.

Fairness is not when everyone gets the same thing.  It's when everyone gets what they need to be successful.  This isn't fairness.  It's time for special education funding to follow the children they are to fund.

I feel sorry for the parents of kids in Toronto.

Sometimes Exclusion Is the Most Inclusive Policy

The future that we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people's children.
     - Marian Wright Edelman

As we get closer to Alanna's inevitable transition from IBI into the school system (a transition I anticipate with much dread), I am forced to contemplate the whole idea of inclusion and what it really means.

Most educators seem to press for "inclusion" - that is, for a child with special needs to be part of a regular classroom with their peers, with support, if necessary.  Our local school board (similar to American school districts) even has this as a policy statement:

The Thames Valley District School Board believes most exceptional children should have their needs met, using a variety of strategies, techniques and resource support in regular classes in their home school.

I don't grasp this philosophy at all.  Placement should be dictated by the needs of the student.  For children with autism, it should be based on the child's ability to tolerate a regular classroom, how self-directed they are, their adaptive behaviour level, and most important, their ability to do grade level work or benefit from social interaction with children close to their own age.

Some educators will simply say that grade level can have modified expectations and then a child can remain in a regular class.  Some modifications might be appropriate, but not many.  Take for example a class of grade one students who are learning about addition.  If a child is in that class and does not understand how to count and the meaning of "more", "less", or "fewer", the whole concept of "modification" becomes meaningless.  You can't teach addition without a basic mathematical foundation, and if you can't count, you'll find addition pretty hard.

Is the modification to teach the student to count while the rest of the class is  learning how to add?  If so, who is teaching the student how to count?  If that is an EA, then why even bother have the student in the class if they are being taught different curriculum?  Worse, if the teacher is expected to do this themselves, what is the child doing when the teacher is working with the majority of the class?  The child is likely to become bored because the work is too hard and then we might see behaviours occurring. 

On the social level, I can see great benefit from a child with autism being with typical peers, but only if they are "close enough" socially to benefit.  A six year old child who still can't play co-operatively is going to struggle... the typical children will play in a much more complex manner and probably use language that is too difficult for a child at this developmental level to follow or reciprocate.

This all seems like common sense to me.  If a child is doing something different than the rest of the class then why bother put them in a regular class?  Withdraw them to a proper segregated class with a very small teacher to student ratio where they can get individualized instruction with "inclusion" where appropriate (recess, gym, other activities where skill levels are appropriate).  This will benefit the children in the mainstream class as well - they do not have to "slow down" for the special needs child, or have to tolerate behaviour that is being generated by frustration on the part of that child trying to learn.

The irony is that inclusion is a smokescreen for "ways to save money".  It is cheaper to put a child in a regular class with as minimal EA support as the school can get away with versus a fully staffed special education class.

Sometimes exclusion is the fair and right thing for everyone.  Pretending "inclusion" is fair for every child is nonsense. 

An Election About Nothing Again

For those outside Ontario (and even for those inside the province), we are presently in a provincial election.  Media coverage has been sparse and frankly, there are not a lot of issues being discussed.  Perhaps it is voter fatigue but it appears this is a sleeper election.

The Ontario Liberals are going for a third term.  It appears (though it is by no means inevitable) they will win a third majority government.  This saddens me because I am angry at this government for ignoring autism.  If you question Liberals about autism, they will tell you how much they have done to assist and how they "undid" decisions from the previous government.  Fair enough - but news flash!  They have been in power for eight years... what you did eight years ago is done, let's focus on the future.

Perhaps my greatest complaint is the rolling out of all-day learning.  Dalton McGuinty likes to tout himself as the "education premier" and he believes giving children all day kindergarten will result in better outcomes for learning.  Perhaps this is true, perhaps not - Ontario is the first jurisdiction in North America to try it.  It may improve learning, or it may be a populist decision to provide free child care to thousands of parents who wish to return to work and not pay for said child care out of pocket.

All of that aside, my primary complaint is this:  why do typically developing children, who are already excellent learners, get two more years of full day learning when children with autism are stuck on waiting lists for two or three years to receive treatment to help them learn?  Why do school age children, for whom tens of thousands of dollars is allocated, not have those funds follow them in the school?  Why do parents have to fight so hard for a decent education for their autistic kids when evidence-based best practices are known and being applied in other jurisdictions?

It would seem according to Dalton, only regular, non-disabled children are worthy of education.  That is an attitude I can't ignore.  It is wrong and it should scream wrong to everyone.

Autism aside, there are things I like in all platforms - PC, NDP or Liberal.  But I have to speak for autism because there are so very few voices speaking for autism and they are too quiet to be heard by politicians.

I can't vote Liberal.  I implore you, as the reader, to vote NDP or PC, or anything else but Liberal.  Our kids are worthy of education... of having a meaningful education that suits their needs, not the needs of the teachers, or the EAs, or the board.  How sad the "education premier" can't see this.

Fairness in Education

Ontario's public schools have long argued that Intensive Behavioural Intervention (IBI) is a form of "therapy" and thus cannot be delivered in the school system.  Although it is therapeutic in nature, IBI is simply a way of teaching students with autism in an intensive manner (it is just intensive ABA).  The principles of ABA are used daily in schools, whether teachers know they are doing it or not.  When you think about it, most types of "therapy" with the exception of medical procedures are really learning techniques.  Speech therapy is a way of teaching people how to change how they talk and process language.  Physiotherapy (or physical therapy) is a way to teach people how to move their muscles in different ways.  Occupational therapy teaches people how to perform daily living activities.  Psychologists use cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to help people learn how to change the way they think.  There is no real practical difference between education and therapy.

Let's examine how special education dollars are spent.  In Ontario, dollars are given to the board on a per student basis but the money does not follow the student.  Thus it is possible to have 100% of the dollars for one student go to a school where that student does not attend.  School boards like this because it gives them maximum funding with maximum flexibility and zero accountability.  If we look at the funding for a full-time educational assistant, we can see they earn between $20-24 an hour for 6.5 hours a day if they are full time.  In this particular link, you can also see there is a special stipulation that the EA in question should be able to translate American Sign Language (ASL), one imagines for a deaf student, but possibly also for a student with autism who uses sign language.

To be an EA, one usually needs a nursing background, an early childhood educator background, or a developmental service worker background, all available through Ontario's colleges. 

To employ an EA full-time at $24/hour for 6.5 hours a day costs the board (excluding benefits and other sundries) about $33,000.  This assumes a 42 week year (I am guessing here - eight weeks for summer plus one week at Christmas and March Break).  If there are benefits, that might bump us up to $37,000 a year.

A typical ABA worker might receive the same hourly rate, without benefits, and with much more training than this EA.  They would be more accountable to parents.  They would allow children with autism to make real gains on an IEP.

So tell me why we hire people to be EAs for children with autism who are not qualified?  If we can require EAs to be ASL interpreters, why can we not require experience with ABA?  And then tell me why we don't hire the people to conduct the education that we know works for less cost?

The problem is not money in the system, it is how it is wasted.  Our kids deserve better. 

Autism Rates Rise Again

This recent article from the Ottawa Citizen is reporting that the CDC in the United States estimates Autism Spectrum Disorder prevalence at 1 in 91 children (about 1.1% of the population) and 1 in 58 boys (1.74% of boys).  This is a huge increase from the early days of 1 in 10000 births (0.01%).  What was once a rarity is now becoming more and more common.  A typical elementary school of perhaps 500 students will now include between five and ten students on the spectrum.

Will the prevalence reach 5% of boys in the next 20 years?  Governments need to prepare now for this inevitability, while researchers continue to work to determine what must be the missing environmental trigger for this disorder.

In Ontario, this means:

• More trained ABA therapists graduating from Ontario colleges, and appropriate placements for them to gain valuable experience.
• Mandatory training for Educational Assistants (EAs) working with children on the spectrum.
• Increased funding for the Autism Intervention Program - there are over 1,600 kids waiting, and this will get worse, not better, as prevalence continues to grow.
• Better access to early diagnosticians for autism.
• A plan and individualized funding for community care and involvement for adults transitioning from school.

Confessions

I'm starting to get better at comparing Alanna to other kids her own age.  Many times, I'm able to accept where the kids are developmentally, and accept where Alanna is developmentally and how she does many things a normal kid does, albeit sometimes in a very different way.  However, I've got to confess, I did lapse into my self-pity again this week.  A very sweet little girl I know who is a little younger than Alanna saw her Dad after about a 45 minute separation, saw him, and came running shouting "Daddy, Daddy!" only to be picked up in his arms and swung around... naturally she had a big grin on her face.  After I got over coveting that simple interaction I realized that Alanna does that with me in her own way.  She might try to climb over me, smile, or press her body against mine.  If I'm really lucky I might even get a nice hug!  It is her way of telling me she missed me.

While I'm confessing, I have another thing to share.  My wife sometimes reminds me not to try to plan too far in the future (I am very much long term, forward looking person).  With Alanna, it is so hard to tell where she is going to be.  Some days, I feel happy knowing she will be herself (and develop as far as she can) and that's good enough for everyone, including me.  Other days, I worry myself thinking if I don't keep pushing for the best interventions, she won't make all the gains she could make... and have the best life she could have.

Case in point:  transition to school.  Alanna probably has a few years before this becomes an issue since she is not yet even three.  But when the time comes, do we spend $58,000 a year (how we would even get this money is beside the point) on a designated ABA school like New Haven, where Alanna will certainly learn more skills designed to get to be as independent as possible?  Or, would I use that money to save for her future (RDSP) or another a savings vehicle to provide her with lifetime care?  Yes, she will probably make some gains in the public school system, but she would make probably greater gains in a special school.  However, spending $750,000 until she turns 18 (assuming I had this money) to fund this education vs. saving it for a lifetime care fund is going to be a tough decision.  Some argue once the critical intervention time has passed, intensive intervention is not needed.  This is the refrain of the Ontario government, which stresses constantly that IBI is "time limited."  I am not sure I agree.  However when it is your money and you are responsible for the life of a child, it's not such an easy decision.  I wrack my brain on this stuff.

So perhaps I should "cross that bridge when we get to it", as my wife likes to remind me.  I'll really try.  Let's see how long I can put it out of my mind!

Issues in Education

Last night I had the pleasure of listening to Lindsay Moir speak about issues in autism education.  The dude knows what he is about - he knows about issues all over the province and how they have been resolved.  A few things I learned!


Ontario Spends More on Special Education Funding Per Student Than Any Other Jurisdiction IN THE WORLD.


I found this one hard to believe.  But it's not so hard, when he explained that a lot of this money gets diverted from special education to teacher salaries.  Last year, enrollment in the local school board dropped by 1500 kids.  Only 15 teacher positions were eliminated.  Since we know they were not teaching 100 students each, those teachers must have been re-assigned.  Teachers in Ontario are expensive.  After five years of teaching, many teachers are making $85,000 per year or more and they have the most powerful union in the province.  Not only that, but their massive pension plan (well managed too) owns a lot of businesses, so the politics are very complicated.  The claim is that, despite huge losses of Education Assistants (EAs) funding is still flowing - and special education money is being diverted to other areas.  This is because special education dollars are allocated on per board basis, not per student or even per school!


Your Child's Rights
I found out our children have the right to:

• Attend school for a full day, if other children can go for a full day.
• Have their needs met properly - can take a variety of forms.
• Go to school if not toilet trained.
• Be properly supervised for lunch if other children are supervised.

Grants

There are several grants available to school boards.  One, the Special Equipment Amount (SEA), allows parents to buy whatever they need for their kids to succeed at school.  There is no cap on this amount.  This means that, for example, if we needed a speech output device for Alanna at some point, that would get covered.  This is good because these devices cost $10,000 or more.  There is another grant to get two attendants (EA / Nurse) if your child has severe behavioural problems or is medically fragile (the first can be authorized by a psychologist).  And finally there is a grant to educate staff on autism.  This is fantastic because most reasonable teachers and support personnel will take the opportunity to be educated if the training exists!

Ways to get an EA

Lindsay was very clear that EAs are only one way to get needs addressed.  The other way is basically relying on "volunteers" - students in post-secondary settings who need placements, or seniors.  You cannot pay for an EA in the system because the union grieves that as work contracted out.  However, there are ways around this.  One woman in Toronto contracted an ABA worker to accompany her son 25 hours a week to school.  However, the contract stipulated that she was not paid for those hours - they were volunteer hours.  However, the woman paid the worker to be "on call" for 25 hours on the weekend.  The fact that she had never called on the worker on the weekend was apparently not important.  The school board took her to court on this one but lost.  I think this is complete nonsense personally.  If a parent is going to fund a support worker, why the heck wouldn't the school want that?  Yes they can't "control" them but it frees up resources for elsewhere.

You Need an IPRC For Your Child To Be Legally Exceptional

Many schools just try to put children on Individual Education Plans (IEPs) but if you don't initiate the Individual Placement Review Committee (IPRC) process to get your child officially designated exceptional, then the principal can withdraw services at any time.  IPRC kids must always have their needs met as specified by the review committee.  You can initiate IPRC on the first day of school.

Thanks to Lindsay for a great information session.

Educational Justice

Recently I was made aware of a judicial case where a mother, in Ontario, was trying to place her child in a regular classroom with support.  This had been the scenario since kindergarten, and the student was now moving into grade four.

The special education committee ruled he should be placed in a special education classroom and not in a regular classroom with supports.  The parents appealed this ruling to a court, because they felt this was unfair.  Interestingly, they brought a local expert to argue that the ABA supports the school was offering was inadequate.  However, the tribunal could not force the school board to offer better supports; they could only rule on whether or not the child's placement was adequate.

Many parents are outraged by this.  These kinds of cases scare me because I see our future in them.

My opinion:

Is the ABA support offered by the school sufficient?

Probably not.  Most parents I have spoken to in the Toronto area have told me the ABA implementation in schools is woefully inadequate and many children are not learning in these classes as they were in IBI.

Is the placement valid?

I may get flamed for this, but it would seem that it is more appropriate, if the child is going to remain in school, to go to special education.  If his behaviours are very disruptive to the other students, there is no real choice.  We cannot expect a child who is screaming, stimming, or otherwise engaging in disruptive behaviour to be with a mainstream class because those students will be so distracted they may not learn well.  Additionally, if the student is functioning at a four or five year old level, there is no way they are learning the same curriculum as a mainstreamed grade four class.  It would seem the decision made is a good one.

I think the real underlying complaint in this judicial review is the quality of ABA programming in Ontario schools.  The complaint is that, despite an order from the Ministry of Education - PPM 140 - schools are still not prepared for students on the autism spectrum.  It is truly unfortunate and infuriating that there are private schools that do offer the support needed - for $50,000 a year.  After forking out this amount yearly for private IBI during the preschool years, who has the money left to afford such luxuries?

If school boards cannot provide appropriate supports, then give parents choice in education and issue vouchers like Alberta.  Let us choose the supports for our own children.

Alas, I fear the unions will never let this happen.  Education for all, and better education for the wealthy.  But we don't have two tier education or health, right?