The Ontario Autism Program pilot that was announced in February will have 41 Northern Ontario families participating, says Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli.
He is responding to Nickel Belt MPP France Gélinas who said she was shocked last week when the Northern Ontario Autism Alliance informed her that no one, "not them or their allied advocacy groups, or service providers or support groups have been able to identify a single Northern Ontario family who have received an invitation to participate in the pilot program."
Six hundred children and youth from across the province will be invited to participate in the new program and Fedeli said northern families are part of the new needs-based funding pilot program.
"I'm shocked to see France Gélinas misleading people about the Ontario Autism Program. She claims proportionately there should be more than 30. I can tell her that if she'd asked she would have learned that there are actually 41 of the 600 are from the north," he said.
Fedeli said like all 600 families, the northern ones are being assessed and receiving their allotment.
"Once we know this pilot assessment tool is working it will be rolled out across the province to all 8,000 families," he said.
The new assessment tool was developed by the Ministry of Health, which will do an assessment of the tool shortly, and if it's successful will be rolled out.
"At the same time, every child who is registered with the Ontario Autism Program is receiving support from the province," explained Fedeli. "That's versus only 25 per cent of kids that were covered under the previous Liberal government. We've doubled the budget from 300 to 600 million."
Sudbury.com reporter Matt Durnan reports, Northern Ontario Autism Alliance leadership team member Julia Ritchie spoke in February about her concerns with the pilot, highlighting age caps for funding and the wait times for kids in Northern Ontario to receive a diagnosis compared to children living in southern Ontario.
Ritchie has been reaching out to her network around Northern Ontario since invitations to participate in the pilot were sent out in March, and she said that to date she hasn't been able to find anyone in Northern Ontario who was invited to be part of the pilot.
"Since the pilot was announced and invitations started rolling out, families talk," said Ritchie. "We have a lot of advocacy groups and you make a lot of friends across the province because we're all in the same situation. Invites started going out at the end of March for families that were already on the OAP waitlist."
Ritchie made similar comments to those made by Gélinas, speaking about the diverse and unique needs of kids in Northern Ontario.
"We wanted Northern Ontario families included in the pilot for fairness of course, but also because of the intricacies that we deal with could be faced in the pilot format," said Ritchie. "For example, do travel costs get absorbed in this budget? Does it come out of the budget so a family in Toronto doesn't have to spend on travel costs but a family on Manitoulin does?"
These questions remain to be answered, and have been asked since the pilot program was announced more than three months ago.
"I think we really wanted to see how things like travel costs would work for families in Northern Ontario so that the family would be supported and those issues would be identified and hopefully resolved for the real program," said Ritchie.
"All of the kinks should be worked out in the pilot, so things like access to French language providers, ensuring Indigenous families have culturally competent care and we wanted to make sure those things were addressed in the pilot. Our families have already been waiting for so long. We just want to make sure that northern views are included in the pilot."
Ritchie's husband, Sean, met recently with Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli, who indicated that Northern Ontario families had been chosen for the pilot. Ritchie says that she understands how vast Northern Ontario is and it's possible that a family outside of her contact network was chosen.
With files from Matt Durnan, Sudbury.com
