Update: Monday, July 21, 2008

Yesterday I wrote that we could pay for autism treatments now or pay higher institutional costs later. I also talked about how difficult it must be for provincial governments to find funding, not only for children with autism, but for those suffering from other disabilities.

However, since I published that post I have thought about the issues some more.  Not all disabilities are the same. For example, if a child has learning and related disabilities, they can be provided with services within the school system. While there are waiting lists there as well, it is possible to get remedial withdrawal services or placement in a special education class.

However, for children with severe autism-type symptoms, those options are not even possible UNTIL their behaviour is under control.  I also re-read the arguments some advocacy sources have made on the topic of a national strategy of seamless services. And, of course the main way for that to happen would be to have our national medicare program fund these treatments (by simply using their child’s provincial health care card). For example, here is what Harold Doherty has said on the topic on his website “Facing Autism in New Brunswick.”

So, the more I have thought about it the more a national medicare funding approach makes sense. Therefore, since the autism advocacy community needs to pull together, consider me now onside.

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All political parties have failed children with autism and their families to a certain extent. Mike Harris did not want to provide long-term funding for ABA intensive behaviour modification treatments, which are also called IBI therapy (meaning intensive behavioural intervention), after age six. Similarly, neither did the Dalton McGuinty government until 2005, all the while continuing their legal fight against parents every step of the way.

So, where do things stand right now? According to Maria Babbage of the Globe and Mail, “the Liberal government is failing to live up to its promises to adequately fund early therapy for autistic children, forcing some service providers to turn away families who’ve waited years for an expensive but crucial treatment.”

How can that be? Recall, Ontarians had a provincial election in October 2007 and the Liberals, under Dalton McGuinty won, another majority — a healthy majority. So, what does that say? I am not sure, but it was disappointing because voters had a clear choice. For example, John Tory committed another $75 million dollars for IBI treatments — which included school aged children. Is that a drop in the bucket or would it have helped? We will never know because the Progressive Conservatives were not elected.

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In Toronto and the GTA, and no doubt clear across Canada, school board trustees have, like all public sector personnel, acquired an attitude of entitlement regarding the use of taxpayers money.  What is especially discouraging is the fact trustees are elected in the public interest. In other words, they are supposed to be in a position of public “trust.” Yet, if actions speak louder than words, the only interest they have once elected are their own salaries and perks.

Read Don Peat’s Toronto Sun column today about the Toronto Catholic School Board’s inappropriate spending habits. Remember, this is the crowd who took home, on average, $107,000. As Peat states:

“They spent themselves right through warnings and into supervision. Documents obtained by the Toronto Sun show taxpayers shelled out for embattled Toronto Catholic trustees to stay at a Beverley Hills hotel, buy iPods, pick up $1000 in gift cards, donate to a Mississauga symphony concert, get a master’s degree and shovel cash to schools in their wards.”

What amazes me is that even after Ontario Education Minister Kathleen Wynn assigned a supervisor to run the board, the trustees kept right on spending. So, we either have to start holding their feet to the fire and vote for new trustees at the first opportunity.

Or, it is time to abolish school board trustees altogether.

H/T Cathy Cove.

Why is it that “elected” school board trustees have so much difficulty closing schools that have low enrollments? Is this lack of decision making only an Ontario problem? Or, is it a problem clear across this country? That, in spite of supposedly clearly thought out provincial guidelines on how to conduct a pupil “accommodation review,” few trustees are able to buck what their community and parents seem to want. 

It is a dichotomy for sure. On the one hand, parents don’t want to pay high property and income tax rates. But, on the other, they lobby and lobby hard for all schools to remain open even when the handwriting is on the wall. So, the squeaky wheels do get the grease.

Which means, the more noise the community makes, the more unlikely trustees can rise above the noise and do the right thing. Although in fairness, I should point out that some trustees ARE able to make those types of tough decisions but, when they do so at public meetings, are often booed and jeered by parent groups.

Is that what school board trustees are supposed to do? Aren’t they the ones that are supposed to represent the public and make sure costs and related matters are kept in check? Or, are they there just to do as the various parent and community activists want them to do? Rhetorical questions for sure as I certainly don’t have any answers to those questions. But, let’s look at a couple of examples of this phenomenon.

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The anti-conservative bias in the Canadian media over the last few days seems to be just plain petty, if not downright misleading. For example, Kevin Donovan suggests in today’s Toronto Star that Canadian taxpayers are picking up Tory ministerial expenses so that the party can raise money. If that were true I would be all over the government’s case as well because I too expect accountability. But, to suggest that it is always wrong when federal members of parliament — no matter which political party they represent — combine public duties with party duties, is clearly over the top.

For example, Donovan writes:

“When then-Indian affairs minister Jim Prentice flew to Nova Scotia to meet with provincial chiefs, he headlined a Conservative fundraising dinner in Prince Edward Island. Taxpayers paid for the trip.And when Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn jetted off from a Quebec fisheries forum to attend a government meeting in Manitoba, he also guest-starred at a local Tory fundraising banquet. The federal Conservatives – elected on promises to be squeaky clean – are using government resources to help fill their election war chest.”

I will repeat what Donovan said: “The federal Conservatives — elected on promises to be squeaky clean — are using government resources to help fill their election war chest.” What misleading poppycock and a non sequitur!

What exactly is the Star suggesting? That when any federal parliamentarian travels anywhere in Canada on business he or she can’t do anything else why he or she is there? Does that also apply to Liberal Leader Stephen Dion and NDP Leader Jack Layton? Does that mean that if Dion travels the country this summer, he can never speak to party officials while he is travelling — because to do so would be the same as being subsidized by the taxpayers? Because, if the government is ”not squeaky clean” when they combine events, then neither is the opposition. Who holds them accountable? The Toronto Star? The Parliamentary Press Gallery? (PPG) 

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Yes, you read that right. The Ontario teachers’ unions are receiving taxpayers money so they can lobby government for more salaries and benefits.  And, all the various trustee associations — many of whom have already overspent — are also getting more money so they can lobby for more money.

That hardly seems fair. Here is the government website where all the latest so-called ”investments” have been listed. While some of the expenses could be described as investments in human resources (e.g., job training), the arts and youth, I certainly wouldn’t call funding that goes to union leadership and trustees associations as investments. Those items actually represent some serious spending.

For example, OTF (Ontario Teachers Federation) received $250,000 and ETFO (the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario) received $900,000 — for a total of $1.15 million — while the various trustee associations received $1 million.

Just how, I wonder, are those spending allocations actually investments? Are teachers’ unions and the OTF not already funded through the union dues each and every teacher pays? Are the trustees not already funded under the combined property tax structure and education grants? And, given how many trustees receive on average $20,000 — compared to their alloted $5000 – why does the McGuinty government continue to support them with even more taxpayers money?

In my opinion, teachers’ unions should not be receiving ANY taxpayers money and the trustee associations should ONLY be paid out of existing budgets.

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H/T Cathy Cove with thanks.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before but there are possible options to get government-based funding for education and job training supports once someone has reached their sixteenth birthday — in Ontario at least — if not earlier. And, if those options are possible in Ontario, I suspect they are also likely through disability support programs in all of Canada’s provinces and territories.

While I have written about how to apply for Ontario disability benefits before, I haven’t talked about educational supports. No, it would not be through the Education Ministry. In Ontario at least, those types of supports are available through the Ministry of Community and Social Services under the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP).

On the weekend, a discussion was ongoing here at Crux-of-the-Matter on a thread about the Ontario Appeal Court sending the parents’ law suit (for autism therapy through Boards of Education) back to their lawyers to re-work their brief if they were ever to have a chance at winning. I was explaining how my now adult son with autism got funding back in the late 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s for private school tuitions and the penny dropped.

If then, why not now?

Some background. Since the Ontario government seems to have erased all trace of the original Vocational Rehabilitation Branch of the Ministry of Community and Social Services (MCSS), I’ll have to work from memory.

Sometime back in the 1970’s, a family took the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services to court because the Vocational Rehabilitation Branch (Voc Rehab for short) would not fund children and youth with learning disabilities. MCSS said the services were just for those 16 and older. To the best of my recollection, the parents and their lawyer argued that getting specialized care earlier in life was a pre-requisite to later vocational adjustment. The court agreed.

So, from that point on, we parents were able to apply for private school tuitions to send our children to schools that specialized in methods and strategies that would help them. Boards simply wrote a letter saying they could not provide the specialized services these young people needed or they identified them as “hard to serve.” Since the only provincially funded school was Trillium, private schools sprung up all over. Moreover, children who were blind and deaf also benefitted from this legal precedent — meaning the government even paid university tuitions to send young people to Gallaudet University in the U.S.

Not that getting the funding was easy. It was a very rigorous process but, my point here, is that it was possible. The main criterion was that students had to be in the normal intelligence range in some intellectual area — meaning that there had to be a discrepancy between potential and current functioning. If a child had behavioural problems as well, that too was taken into consideration when chosing which independent school or treatment centre to send the child and what type of treatment the child or youth needed.

In other words, if someone is diagnosed as intellectually disabled, they did not qualify because there was a separate program for children and adults who fit that profile.

We paid ourselves for the first two years but our son got funding after that and was able to attend a residential private school for several years. It really helped him and made it possible for him now to live independently in the community. He is married and does volunteer work.

Now, I should also declare that I know all about Voc Rehab from a professional point of view as well. When I was teaching university and operating a private practice for special needs children, youth and adults who had reading and writing difficulties, I had dozens of referrals over the years from Voc Rehab. What I did was work with students with learning disabilities (be they autistic or not) to get through high school, college and in some cases, university. I worked with them a couple of times a week teaching them learning strategies and how to use technical devices — on the work they had to do for their courses — and the success rate was very high. My point is I was a “private” practice and my fees were paid!

Then, in 1998, the Mike Harris government cancelled the entire Voc Rehab program by folding it into ODSP. Well, why didn’t I think of this before? If students could get funding before, why not now? So, I looked up the eligibility criteria and sure enough it says vocational supports are available from age 16 onwards. Just go to the main ODSP link in my first paragraph and scroll down the page to “eligibility.”

Well, if a group of parents were to sue again, only this time against ODSP (or the equivalent in other provinces and territories) insisting that pre-vocational supports are necessary for later rehabilitation, perhaps history would repeat itself, and funding for independent schools and treatment centres could be available.

Here is the application form. While there have been a number of law suits by parents trying to get funds to pay for autism therapies, to my knowledge those law suits have been directed at the provincial governments and/or the various departments of education and school boards.

Something else to think about.

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Why do we have elected trustees on school boards at the municipal level? We have them to oversee the education and well being of children and youth living in a specific municipality — representing both public and separate (Catholic) rate payers. And, key in that role of overseer is making sure money is spent wisely and appropriately.

While we frequently like to say that elected officials should spend public money as if it were their own — we don’t mean that literally. Yet, when we hear the “average” amount allocated to some Toronto trustees last year was $107,218, what are we, the public, supposed to think?

Well, clearly, the school board trustees that took that amount of money out of a school board budget thought they were “entitled” to it. That board is the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB). And, as the Toronto Sun editorial says today the Education Minister will have to take over this board and appoint a provincial supervisor in order ”to restore fiscal sanity.” 

What is especially unfortunate with this type of “collective failure” is that it silences the competent trustee voices in the confusion. How very frustrating it must be to be a hard working and effective trustee on that board, such as John Del Grande, who the Sun says filed 21 motions proposing various reforms.

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While sitting in the doctor’s office waiting for my appointment last week, I came across an interesting piece on how to finance a post-secondary education. Although the article is written by Stuart Foxman for Readers Digest, he borrows from the work of Tim Cestnick, author of ”Winning the Education Savings Game.“ However, what caught my attention, initially, was an introduction in bold type that states:

“Student debt in Canada amounts to $12.5 billion–and grows by $17 a second. On average, college students accumulate a debt of $13,000 by graduation; students in bachelor programs graduate with a debt of $20,000. Financing your college or univeristy education can be a daunting task–but it can be done. Here’s how.”

The article is short and to the point and it gives concrete suggestions on how to beg, borrow and sweat to finance a post-secondary education. Foxman also provides Internet links. As such, I would highly recommend parents and students read it and give it some thought because every seed planted and idea brought to fruition can bring a dream to reality.

As a retired educator, I recognize that teachers do a good job. As a taxpayer, I also recognize that teachers, whether elementary or secondary, are very well paid with excellent benefit packages (thanks in no small part to teachers’ unions collective agreements). And, I have always been open about the fact that both my husband and I benefit from those benefits.

However, that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize when enough should be enough, particularly given the declining enrollment in the public schools in Ontario. For example, in London Ontario, the estimates are that 1100 students will be lost to both the public and Catholic school boards in that city and that type of projection is happening all across Ontario.

So, I have been waiting (since the budget was released yesterday) to see just how the teachers’ unions would react — and for evidence of how the Ontario government was going to pay back the teachers and teachers’ unions for all their help during the recent Ontario election. Well, this morning, I got a hint of what to expect. ETFO, the elementary teachers federation, released a statement on their website titled: “Budget Allocation for Education but More Needed.” 
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While I might disagree with not spending some of the Ontario surplus on corporate and business tax relief  — to tell investors Ontario is open for business and new jobs – I do approve of money for skills training. When people lose their jobs, particularly those who are unskilled (corrected) but in highly paid manufacturing jobs, they need to learn new highly specialized skills for the new economy — a reality that may not always be possible.

In fact, the centerpiece of Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan’s budget yesterday was $1.5 billion for a three-year skills training program. My hope is that it is not money wasted. My hope is that whoever is given these funds to develop and provide skills training programs does their homework. And, what I mean by homework is that a thorough workplace and economic analysis be done to find out what jobs are needed now and in the near future. Far too often in the past, people have been retrained in skills that were obsolete by the time they got their training finished.
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