A flag was raised at City Hall on Tuesday to mark World Autism Awareness Day. The day is an important one for a lot of parents, kids and adults in the community who are affected by Autism Spectrum Disorder.

One such parent, Dawna Chorney, a mother of two kids with autism, organized the City Hall event to bring community members, parents and kids together to raise awareness about the condition and the recent cuts announced by the Ontario government to the Autism Program.

“We really need this in our community to bring us together,” said Chorney, “especially with all the recent changes in the Ontario Autism Program. Our autism community is very very important to us. So we wanted to bring people together and recognize World Autism Day.”

Autism has had a major impact on local services. Recently there were lay offs at the local IBI (Intensive Behavior Intervention) Program and Chorney says with those cuts, the services in Timmins are more limited than ever.

“We don’t have the service providers here in Timmins to provide intensive behavior therapy or applied behavior therapy. There just aren’t any qualified workers here. These people were the only people that were qualified to do this. And with the funding being cut from that program, they’ve laid everybody off from there. So there is no more of that in Timmins at this time.”

What the autism community needs in rural areas like Timmins is more community support, more service providers and more therapists. Chorney says it’s while it’s important to see the community rally behind kids, adults and young adults with autism, there needs to be more programs for adults with the condition.

“A lot of people forget that kids with autism grow into adults with autism,” said Chorney. “There are not very many programs for adults with autism in our community which is very much lacking. And we do need to look at that.”

Once a child hits 18, they loose the programs they had access to as a child. They go back on another wait list until they can get funding for adult services.

“There’s a big gap there where it’s like starting all over and the families are left on their own.”

Chorney and others in the autism community here in Timmins are participating in a demonstration march at Queens Park on April 29th to protest the changes to the Ontario Autism Program. She says the trip to the legislature was organized through a community on Facebook, the Ontario Autism Coalition. The plan is to bring buses from all over Ontario to Queens Park and come out in big numbers to protest the provincial cuts.

“There’s power in numbers,” said Chorney, “and we need to all band together to get the changes that we need.”

Chorney actually spoke directly with Doug Ford about her concerns regarding the cuts. She got his number from a friend of hers and after leaving a text message, he called her one evening and they spoke for 16 minutes.

“I was hoping to try and get through to him about, you know, we need needs-based services,” she said. “Children with autism are all different. You meet one child with autism, that’s one child with autism. Everyone is different.”

Chorney said when Doug Ford spoke, he repeated the plan the Ontario government has for the changes to the Autism Program.

“He didn’t really hear what I was trying to say and hear what my issues were with the changes to the funding.”

Chorney says she tried to explain the needs-based services that parents, kids and adults need. Chorney herself has two kids with autism, one that is non-verbal and one that is high functioning. They have completely different needs in terms of therapy. One needs 24/7 care and the other is quite independent and can take care of himself but needs help with social activities and impulse control.

“We need to look at what each child needs,” she said. “It’s not a band-aid solution where you can just throw money at people and send them on their way. Everyone is different and that’s how the funding needs to be broken down.”

Doug Ford tried to justify the cuts to the program by saying that there are 23,000 children on a wait list that he wants to clear. He told Chorney he is making these changes so that the 23,000 kids that are not getting services at this time will get funding for the next 18 months. This promise of services might be beneficial for those in bigger cities, but for rural communities up north, there are fewer options.

“Unfortunately for us up in the north, we don’t have private contractors or therapists to hire,” said Chorney. “So it’s great that we’re going to be getting some funding but there are no qualified therapists here to hire to do this work with our children.”

Chorney says this system of just sending kids with autism back to school is not enough. Putting them in the school system will overwhelm teachers and will make things a lot more challenging for schools.

For the event on Tuesday at City Hall, Chorney said she organized it herself when staff from NEOFACS, who would normally organize such an event, were laid off.

“Usually it would be somebody from NEOFACS in their autism services that would, in the past years, organize this. Unfortunately a lot of them have been laid off.”

She said when she realized no one else was going to organize something, she set something up with City Hall and they set up the flag raising within 24 hours. The turnout for the event was impressive, and Chorney says she is thrilled to see so many people coming out to support Autism Awareness Day.

“I’m very happy to see such a great turnout. It’s heartwarming, it makes you feel good. I’m sure we would have had more people if it hadn’t been such a short notice. For 24 hours notice, this is phenomenal.”

 

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