[Nancy Walton]

I'd just like to point out that ASBC and the ABA Support Network know that their meetings have occured on the same date. When the ABA Support Network booked our meetings, we were not aware that the ASBC planned their meetings for the third Tuesday of each month. From December onwards, the ABA SN meetings will be on the second Tuesday of each month. So our meetings will no longer coincide and parents will be able to attend both.

We also would have prefered that the meetings were not on the same weekday, but we were unable to book space on any other weekday.

The ABA Support Network fully endorses the ASBC meetings and we encourage parents to attend as many of both our meetings as possible to get educated and get connected to other parents.

[Nancy Walton]

I'd just like to point out that ASBC and the ABA Support Network know that their meetings have occured on the same date. When the ABA Support Network booked our meetings, we were not aware that the ASBC planned their meetings for the third Tuesday of each month. From December onwards, the ABA SN meetings will be on the second Tuesday of each month. So our meetings will no longer coincide and parents will be able to attend both.

We also would have prefered that the meetings were not on the same weekday, but we were unable to book space on any other weekday.

The ABA Support Network fully endorses the ASBC meetings and we encourage parents to attend as many of both our meetings as possible to get educated and get connected to other parents.

[Nancy Walton]

To piggy back on Jean's comments, this just came across my desk:

Family's move from Ontario to Pennsylvania gave autistic child a complete program of behavioural therapy, arranged by the state. Take that, Canada

Malcolm Stanley
Published On Sun Oct 18 2009

President Barack Obama has introduced a concept into the U.S. health-care debate that "no one should go bankrupt because they got sick."

Most Canadians listen to this rhetoric and smile, secure in the knowledge that for them this issue was solved a long time ago. But for some Canadians this platitude is as relevant as it is to their American cousins. They are going broke in the land of universal health care because someone in their family is sick.

My family and I moved to the United States a year ago, following employment opportunities that promptly vanished like spring flowers in the blizzard of the financial system meltdown.

Left precariously clinging to tenuous health-care insurance, we received an involuntary crash course in the very insecurities of being American that fuel the current U.S. health-care debate. Yet financially, when we balance our chequebook every month, we feel we are more secure and less likely to fail than we were before we left Canada.

How can this be? Well, we have a daughter with autism, a disorder that now strikes at least one in 100 children, seemingly at random. It cannot be tested for or prevented. Autism can prevent children from learning how to communicate, to socialize, to control their own body movements and functions.

Behavioural therapy is the only proven and effective treatment. In Canada, this therapy is provided by a patchwork quilt of provincial programs, all of which are resource constrained.

Rationing of care is the result. In Ontario, where we used to live, children proceed unpredictably from wait list to therapy, sometimes never actually receiving any help at all. Once they reach school age, they are dumped into a system that actually prevents their trained therapists from helping them to learn by barring them from the school building.

In this situation, many Canadian parents empty pocketbooks, mortgage houses and exhaust the kindness of relatives in a scramble to personally provide the behavioural therapy that helps to unlock the minds of their children from their uncooperative bodies. A disproportionate number live below the poverty line. Some go bankrupt.

It is hardly a glowing example of the universal care Canadians so smugly proclaim to their American cousins.

But wait. Now we are the American cousins. What a difference this makes. Before school started, our daughter received a complete program of scientifically validated behavioural therapy, arranged by the state of Pennsylvania, with no mentions of wait lists, benchmarked cut-offs or payment. Now in kindergarten, she receives in-school services and support from therapists with the same training as those who are barred from schools in Ontario.

How can these outcomes be so different for the same child when the clinical diagnosis used as a basis for the provisioning of services is precisely the same? I believe the answer lies in the very basis of our two societies.

Canada is founded on principles of peace, order and good government.

In Ontario, this translates into a benchmarks program that will withdraw therapeutic services from children with autism who do not show a sufficiently timely response to therapy. It is apparently a bureaucratic issue of the proper management of government spending.

If presented with a young Helen Keller, one wonders whether Ontario government-provided therapy services would be withdrawn. Would Keller ever have achieved her eureka moment if, instead of persistently holding Keller's hand under the pump, her therapist had been told to move on to another child with a more visible return on therapeutic investment?

The recent media coming-out party of Carly Fleischmann, who showed mixed indications of therapeutic progress for almost 10 years before flowering into a fearsomely articulate advocate for autistic children, is a local and compelling embodiment of the argument that this management-efficiency approach to providing autism services is misguided.

Counterintuitively, things are different in the United States. A nation founded upon the principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness brings a persistent faith in the individual to the question of how to provide for autistic children. A simple trip of a moving truck has transformed the status of our daughter from that of an inconvenient provincial liability to that of a valued citizen with the right to demand assistance in her essential pursuit of happiness.

In Pennsylvania, her very existence demands that supports be provided, with the full force of the law and court system standing behind her.

These differences in the approach to the treatment of autistic children between our two nations call out the fact that the Canadian system is not the perfectly formed jewel it is often made out to be in comparison with the American system.

Families with children with autism should not go bankrupt. But in Ontario and other Canadian provinces, many do.

By allowing such bankruptcies to occur, policy at both the federal and provincial level reveals a hole in the safety net large enough for entire families to fall through.

It is a hole that America apparently started to patch up some time ago. Canadians have some work to do on their own safety net where it concerns helping and supporting children with autism and their families. There is no time like the present for that work to get started.

Malcolm Stanley advises telecommunications companies on product and service strategies. He currently lives with his family near Philadelphia.

[Nancy Walton]

I would like to encourage everyone to not only fill out the survey that Milburn sent out for the ABA Support Network, but also pass the survey on to your therapists and consultants who should do the service providers survey. Our mandate is to give a voice to the ABA community. This is your chance to voice your praise or concern over the elimination of direct funding. Below is the message that was sent out:

Recently the MCFD announced changes to autism funding and programs in BC which included canceling the Direct Funding option and moving all families over to Invoice Payment Option. The ABA Support Network will be participating in a meeting with Minister Mary Polak and we want YOUR input to bring to the table.

PLEASE SELECT ONE OF THE FOLLOWING ONLINE SURVEYS AND COMPLETE BEFORE 9AM ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2009.

Survey for Parents: http://www.rsvme.com/wsb.dll/16389/20091026224502218.htm

Survey for Service Providers:

://http://www.rsvme.com/wsb.dll/16389/20091026225545046.htm
Thank you for sharing your voice!

From

The ABA Support Network…Giving the ABA Community a Voice

Original announcement by the MCFD – September 16, 2009 http://www2.news.gov.bc.ca/news_releases_2009-2013/2009CFD0003-000348.htm

Additional editorial released by MCFD – October 14, 2009

http://www2.news.gov.bc.ca/news_releases_2009-2013/2009CFD0009-000482.htm

[Nancy Walton]

ABA Support Network meeting, this Tuesday, October 20. Don't miss our presentation on Manding, by Liana Maioni followed by a second hand toy sale.

Thanks to all the parents who donated toys. As well, I'd like to give a special thanks to Rick Riggs of Van Houtte Coffee Services who has kindly donated coffee and tea supplies for our ABA Support Network meetings.

Hope to see you there.
Surrey Sport And Leisure Complex
(Fleetwood Pool and Ice Rink)
16555 Fraser Hwy
Surrey
above the ice rink

[Nancy Walton]

Several members of the ABA Support Network have indicated their concern over the elimination of the Direct Funding option. Please e-mail me at walton@abasupportnetwork.com to share how this will affect you. Once we have the "data", we can educate our govt. about our needs.

[Nancy Walton]

Hi Tina,

If you are on the Direct Funding option, you should have recieved a letter about the changes coming up. If you are on Invoice funding, you may not have recieved the letter, because this change does not really affect you.

I would contact the autism funding unit at 1-877-777-3530.

[Nancy Walton]

The ABA Support Network website is now ready for membership registration! And membership is FREE.

Everyone please check out our website at http://www.abasupportnetwork.com. Click on "membership" at the top of the page and then click the "click here to Join" button. On the membership page, there is also a new parent package to read or download.

We are strictly a parent run and entirely volunteer organization. With the cuts to the EIBI program, we are going to be very busy helping new parents start up quality ABA programs. We are also there give the existing ABA community a voice.

We will be holding monthly meetings at the Surrey Sport and Leisure center, but through our website and membership surveys we will tackle issues province wide.

We would greatly appreciate donations to help offset our start up costs. Donations can be made online.

Thanks to everyone for your support.

[Nancy Walton]

The ABA Support Network website is now ready for membership registration! And membership is FREE.

Everyone please check out our website at http://www.abasupportnetwork.com. Click on "membership" at the top of the page and then click the "click here to Join" button. On the membership page, there is also a new parent package to read or download.

We are strictly a parent run and entirely volunteer organization. With the cuts to the EIBI program, we are going to be very busy helping new parents start up quality ABA programs. We are also there give the existing ABA community a voice.

We will be holding monthly meetings at the Surrey Sport and Leisure center, but through our website and membership surveys we will tackle issues province wide.

We would greatly appreciate donations to help offset our start up costs. Donations can be made online.

Thanks to everyone for your support.

[Nancy Walton]

The ABA Support Network website is now ready for membership registration! And membership is FREE.

Everyone please check out our website at http://www.abasupportnetwork.com. Click on "membership" at the top of the page and then click the "click here to Join" button. On the membership page, there is also a new parent package to read or download.

We are strictly a parent run and entirely volunteer organization. With the cuts to the EIBI program, we are going to be very busy helping new parents start up quality ABA programs. We are also there give the existing ABA community a voice.

We will be holding monthly meetings at the Surrey Sport and Leisure center, but through our website and membership surveys we will tackle issues province wide.

We would greatly appreciate donations to help offset our start up costs. Donations can be made online.

Thanks to everyone for your support.

[Author]

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