A commentary by a father and member of the neurodivergent community. He lives in Richmond.
It’s been a year since our province announced it would phase out its successful autism funding unit and create “family connection centres” or “hubs.”
Unlike most one-year anniversaries, this one was not celebrated by many, if any, and is a reminder of how out of touch the ministry is with the needs of children with disabilities.
Through the funding unit, families of autistic children under six years old have been receiving $22,000 a year, or $6,000 a year for those older than six, to provide therapies and support.
The individualized funding model has been in place in British Columbia for 20 years, and made British Columbia a global trailblazer in the support of autistic youth.
The government says its new plan will provide utopian care for all neurodivergent children ranging from, but not exclusive to, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, Down syndrome, Autism, ADHD, OCD and Anxiety. With no diagnosis required to be accepted into the program, about 80,000 children will be seeking care. That is an estimated influx of tens of thousands of children.
For a glimpse of what is to come, consider the services that our government already controls. The wait to receive an appointment for a public funded diagnosis for autism is estimated at 36 months.
After that, the paperwork begins and the appointments start for an official assessment and diagnosis. This adds a couple of more months to the wait.
The situation was so bad that in 2021 the Variety Children’s Charity raised money to try to “clear the (wait)list”, and provided funding for private assessments for families with an annual income of less than $75,000 a year.
This brought the overall wait time down to 18 months, but that was short-lived. Wait times are at record high numbers again.
The government announced its “family connection centres” plan even though a similar plan, launched in 2019 in Ontario, has been a colossal failure.
With only 888 autistic children entering the program and more than 56,000 waiting for services, that means one in 64 children are receiving services, and 63 of 64 of them are not.
Information on what is happening in Ontario prompted 34 organizations representing many of the neurodivergent children in B.C. to publicly unite against our government’s plan.
In September, a panel of First Nations leaders, the Representative for Children and Youth, advocacy organizations, experts, and parents, organized by the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, unanimously came out against the plan as well.
The writing is on the wall. The B.C. plan will fail and it will be at the expense of our children.
Rather than dismantling the successful autism funding unit, the government should learn from it and build on it. Use it as a model to channel the important and individualized support for these groups of children needing services. Study how to hone in on the strengths of the plan, replicate it, and strengthen it.
Direct funding allows parents the ability to obtain unique and individualized services that are right for their children’s needs.
But where to get that funding? Perhaps part of it could come from one of the causes: alcohol. The government’s inclusion of more support for children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder opens the door to using alcohol tax funds to provide care for so many groups.
British Columbia’s projected net income from alcohol sales in 2022-2023 will be $1.1 billion. A tax increase of half a percentage point would provide $55 million to fund a new individual funding unit — and the province would not have to invest $127 million over three years for its proposed new system.
If the province did not want to raise the tax, it could simply pull that amount from current alcohol tax revenue and devote it elsewhere, like the neurodivergent communities that include FASD.
There are surely other creative solutions; this is simply one of them.
Our elected officials need to work together with a creative and problem-solving mindset to make a real difference for the future of our children.
