Government officials, speaking on the background in a technical briefing, recently said that movement has been slow in recent months due to a new recruitment process that has been in place since late July, and they believe those numbers will begin to grow exponentially.
But they are concerned by the relatively low response rate to letters they have sent to families inviting them to register with the independent recruitment agency, the first step in the new process for children to receive government-funded treatment.
Angela Brandt, president of the Ontario Autism Coalition, said the government only needs to look to its history with the autism program to explain the lower-than-expected uptake.
“Part of the reason is that everyone has lost confidence,” she said in an interview.  “It’s four years later, and there’s still no schedule.”
The Progressive Conservative government announced in early 2019 that it was going to “clean up the waiting list” by giving families either $20,000 or $5,000 to pay for the treatment, depending on the child’s age. 
But parents were outraged and staged waves of protests, as intensive care can cost more than $90,000 a year.  State funding was too small to match anything meaningful for children with higher needs, and services to help teach basic skills should be determined by need, not age, they said.
The government eventually canceled the program and went back to the drawing board.  The next portfolio minister then announced a new needs-based program with a doubled budget, but admitted in December 2019 that it would be phased in over two years rather than being up and running next April.
Merrilee Fullerton is now the third children, community and social services minister in four years and said the development of the needs-based program was “going well”. 
“I strongly encourage families to respond to their invitations and register,” she wrote in a statement.  “We have a large, dedicated team to support families through this process and we are all working to ensure continued progress.”        
There are more than 54,000 children enrolled in the program and waiting for basic services.  The autism community is protesting the delays in launching the program saying “50k is not OK”.  Some of these children have been waiting seven years.
But the government disputes that frame, saying the figure does not represent the waiting list because about 40,000 children have received something.  This includes interim one-off payments and a school entrance program, but many families say what their children really need are basic clinical services.
About 600 families signed up for a pilot phase of the new essential clinical services program starting in March 2021, and by the end of April 2022, the number had grown to 858. There are also children receiving treatment who had grandparents from the previous Liberal program.
The government has sent about 6,300 letters to families, officials said, inviting them to sign up to Access OAP, the new recruitment portal.  They go in order of registration, meaning they start with children who first sought treatment as early as 2015.
Another 5,000 letters are due to go out at the end of August.  But so far, the response has been lower than officials expected.
Fewer than 1,700 families have responded to the letter and signed up for Access OAP, officials said.  The next step is for Access OAP to issue invitations for families to take part in an interview to determine their child’s level of need and almost 300 of these have gone out.
Of those 300 children, 30 have been enrolled in basic clinical services, officials said.
Officials say they see an increase in enrollment when they reach out to families who haven’t responded to the letter, noting that it’s summer and people are busy.  But, they admit, with some children waiting since 2015 or longer, they may not even need the treatment anymore.
Monique Taylor, the longtime NDP critic on the file, said she heard of someone whose child is 17 and just received one of the letters.
“Families are obviously disheartened,” he said. 
“They say, ‘Well, this isn’t going to do anything for me, so why bother?’  I think it is up to the government to follow up with families to find out why and then continue to send out letters so that families who are eligible can apply.”
Brandt, of the Autism Coalition of Ontario, said the government needs to be much more transparent to build trust with the community.
“(The ministry or recruiting agency) needs to do some kind of community outreach to let them know what’s going on,” he said.
“There are a lot of people in the community who don’t understand what’s going on with the (Ontario Autism Program) and because this government isn’t sharing what’s going on, the community doesn’t trust them.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on August 13, 2022.