Ministry corrects OAP monthly numbers post … but can we trust their other numbers?
I’ve been keeping track of the monthly “waitlist” numbers pretty closely, and the updates over the last couple of months had me scratching my head.
I wrote a twitter thread about it on Thursday, and received this comment from the ministry the next day:
All year there has been a concerning trend: A steady decrease in the number of children still in service under the old version of the autism program.
These children were promised continuity of care, and a seamless transition into the new program.
“If you have an existing behaviour plan, it can be extended with no gap in service up to its current level of intensity, or less where clinically appropriate, until you transition into core services in the new needs-based autism program.”
So why then are their numbers dropping so fast? Of the various cohorts of children registered for the OAP, this group has been the most fortunate, receiving multiple extensions to their funding (necessitated by the continuous delays in the ministry’s development/implementation of the new program). It’s highly suspect that thousands of families are giving up their place in this group willingly.
The likely explanation for their drop is that families are being encouraged to transition to either a Childhood Budget or Interim One-Time Funding payment.
“What I’ve heard loud and clear from families, and from service providers as well, is that we need to move away from the Childhood Budgets and move into a needs-based program.” — Todd Smith, July 2019
The Minister stated last summer that they were going to be moving away from the failed model, but seems to shepherding the exact opposite right now.
Let’s look at some numbers to help explain the red flags showing up over the last couple of months, starting with the June 15th update:
The issue reveals itself when you calculate the unaccounted for.
41,321–11,105–23,769 = 6,447
What this number represents is a combination of children still waiting for a funding invitation, as well as the kids still in service in the old program. The breakdown is unclear, but knowing that there were about 1,000 new registrations for the program during that period (and they would be in the group waiting for a funding invite) we can deduce that there were at most 5,500 kids in the old program, likely even less.
For reference, when Todd Smith took over the file last year, the reported number in service was 10,365.
With the original July 15th posted update, we saw this:
If we do the same calculation:
42,167–11,345–28,303 = 2,519
My jaw hit the floor when I first saw this. How could this be right?
With another increase in program registrants, it would mean that there were now less than 2,000 kids in the old program. That’s a significant drop.
Scott Corbett wrote a thread about the numbers too, publishing this on Friday morning:
It was later that day that we saw the Ministry announce they had made an error, and directed us to the website where a correction had been made:
Oops. “4,497 people were mistakenly counted twice”
If we update the calculation:
42,167 – 11,345 – 23,806 = 7,016
That number is higher than the previous month, meaning that there were more new registrations than there were funding invites sent out. How many did they send out? Here’s where is gets interesting.
Posted June number: 23,769
Corrected July number: 23,806
If both of these numbers are correct, it means that they only sent out 37 funding invitations in the month of June.
So I tweeted back, to ask for clarification, and surprisingly, they responded:
By only taking responsibility for the June numbers being wrong, they’re effectively admitting to an embarrassingly low outflow of funding invites over the last month. I think it’s more likely there was some kind of systemic flaw for how they’ve been tracking these numbers.
Think about this for a second.
The Ministry said that as of the end of May, their official count for interim one-time funding invites was 23,769. They claim that number is solid.
Then they say on July 15th that as of the end of June, they’ve sent out 28,303.
28,303–23,769 = 4,534 invites sent out in June
On July 16th they correct their total number to be 23,806.
23,806–23,769 = 37 invites sent out in June
Oops. Slight error there.
Is this the hill the Ministry wants to die on?
“To build trust between the ministry and the public, we need to be open and transparent. Families and the public deserve to know how we are working to provide care. This is one of my top priorities.” — Todd Smith, July 2019
I’ve had major issues with the way the ministry has been reporting their numbers, as they often are leaving out crucial information in order to hide undesired trends. They also decided to make a major shift in their reporting format earlier this year.
I have taken a go at compiling the whole year’s numbers, and then estimating the missing pieces:
Using what I knew for sure, and what could be easily calculated, I started building the chart, then tried to fill in the rest based on previous trends. Maybe I’m being too generous on some numbers, and too low on others. Without ministry data, all you can do is take a shot in the dark.
Some information, like how many interim one-time funding cheques have actually gone out, are complete guesses.
QP Briefing reporter Sneh Duggal tried to obtain info on this earlier this year, mentioning it one of her articles:
“The government’s website says that 12,674 invitations to apply for interim funding had been issued by the end of February, with that number expected to be updated to include March figures on Wednesday. But this number doesn’t show how many interim payments the government has made to families, with Smith’s office not providing that number despite repeated requests.”
Repeated requests denied.
Open and transparent? Yeah, maybe not.
With the most recent error from the ministry in their number reporting, it’s hard to know how much we can trust the information they’re presenting us.
Admitting they made a mistake is one of the most transparent things this ministry has done in a long time, but we need more than that.
They can start by publishing more complete information in their monthly updates, like the number of kids in service in the old program.
They should also go back to reporting multiple months of data together instead of just the most recent one. They used to do this, but then completely changed their format.
It shouldn’t take someone like me taking screenshots each month and putting it together in charts to show the data trends over time.
If this ministry wants us to trust them, they have some work to do.
