A “crisis” for families seeking autism services is prompting a local advocacy group to head to Queen’s Park.
The Thunder Bay group Northern Autism Families is being hosted by members of the NDP this Tuesday. They argue the region’s issues are being ignored or misunderstood by the provincial government and other advocacy groups.
The activist group is going to take their concerns to Question Period, and speak at a press conference afterward.
NAF claims the Ford government caused “already insufficient” services to disappear, adding they took “decades of hard work to build and the Ford government was able to decimate
them in less than a year.”
They want to draw attention to a lack of services in the North, and insufficient funding given to families to access those services. NAF adds much of those budgets are taken up by travel costs, claiming it can cost up to $600 to attend a single 30-minute speech language session.
They add their group can’t wait until the province’s projected date of April 2020 to launch what the government calls its new “needs-based and sustainable” Ontario Autism Program.
