Understanding the new OAP “waitlist” numbers
MCCSS decided last month to change the format of their “monthly numbers.” They had been posting regular updates of the autism program waitlist in a bid to appear more “open and transparent,” but recently they decided to go another way with it.
Their goal was likely to show a waitlist that was decreasing over time, especially since Lisa MacLeod promised in February 2019 to #ClearTheWaitlist within 18 months, using Childhood Budgets.
As we know, they failed … in so many ways.
Despite having an increased program budget, their flow rate of money out to families was incredibly slow.
For a more detailed history of what past monthly number formats have looked like, you can find that here)
If we look first at the Ministry’s old chart:
Then look at mine for the same time period:
The Ministry was likely trying to show two main trends over time:
- Children in service going up
- Waitlist numbers going down
By not including the children registered after April 1st, 2019 in the “children waiting for services” column, they were purposely misrepresenting the data. They were also falsely categorizing children with a Childhood Budget cheque as “in services,” when there was no guarantee these families were even able to access support.
By adjusting the grouping of the data, we saw these trends instead:
- The waitlist actually didn’t decrease
- The number of children in the old version of the program (receiving their recommended amount of ABA therapy) was steadily decreasing every month
With Lisa MacLeod claiming a waitlist of 23,000 was so unacceptable in February 2019, what about a waitlist of over 24,000 in February 2020 … with a program running all year aimed at clearing that wait?
So why did they change the Monthly Numbers?
With the promise of a new program eventually, and finally moving away from issuing more Childhood Budget invitations, the Ministry has no positive trends they can show from their numbers right now. They’ve also maybe admitted to themselves that they can’t consider a child with a Childhood Budget or one-time funding payment as someone “in service.”
Until the new program is ready, kids are simply receiving a cheque assigned by their age, and not their need.
The Ministry has now elected instead to show how many invitations they’ve sent out — Not to be confused with the amount of kids who have actually received funding, which they have decided not to share.
The want to show the biggest numbers they can.
It’s important for the ministry to remember that even with a cheque in hand, there’s no way to know how many of these kids are actively receiving therapy.
Breaking down the numbers
Here’s the most recent number release:
First off, lets calculate the uncounted children.
39,618–10,434–16,877 = 12,307
Who does this represent?
It’s a combination of the children still in service under the old program, as well as the children who have not yet received an invitation for one-time funding. We can only estimate the number breakdown of each of those.
Based on the trend from previous data, the number of kids in the old program was going down by about 350/month. Two months have passed since I was able to calculate about 8,050 kids in that group, so it stands to reason that about 7,350 may be left.
12,307 (uncounted) -7,350 (old program) = ~4,957 kids still waiting for one-time funding invitations.
Don’t forget that the Ministry placed a deadline on themselves a few months ago, stating that all invitations would go out by the end of March, seen in this old screenshot:
Then they decided to give themselves a break, by extending their own deadline:
By doing this, it gives them an excuse for why one-time funding invitations are still going out after March 31st, but it doesn’t excuse the backlog for invitations not sent out to those who are already registered for the program prior to March 31st.
Since the Ministry is also electing to just show a single point in time, I’ve taken the liberty of putting their last 2 updates into a chart:
So new registrations are still increasing, childhood budget invitations have stopped, and interim one-time funding invitations are going out, but not as fast as promised.
For many reasons, these numbers are not useful. We can’t go backwards and add invitation numbers from previous months, because they were never provided before. We can’t add to the old version of the chart and move forward, because there’s no longer enough information given.
The biggest issue is that we don’t know how many families actually have received funding, when we’re only given invitation numbers
Reporter Sneh Duggal from QP Briefing made reference to this in a recent article:
“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.”
So at best, we can only guess.
Based on Childhood Budget outflow data, about 700 children were receiving cheques each month. It’s been 2 months since we knew 5,069 had received their cheques, so let’s assume 1,400 more families have their money now. That makes 6,469 (from 10,434 invitations, or about 60% of those invited).
For the sake of argument, lets assume the same rate of uptake on one-time funding invitations, because why not? We literally have nothing to go on.
If we add up all these assumptions, we can try and build a new chart of what the monthly numbers could look like:
Eventually there would have to be an extra category: The kids who register after the point the Ministry decides they’re no longer eligible for one-time funding. Who knows when that might be.
I’m going to assume they keep the same numbers format at least as long as they’re still issuing invitations for one-time funding.
What conclusions can we draw?
The Ministry will continue to do what they can to make their numbers look as palatable as possible, but the truth of the matter is that they’ve failed miserably in any attempt to be transparent, including withholding information requested by the press.
If they want to be open about it, give us the number of kids who have actually received funding. Even better would be to include the amount spent, like they did in the very first update last summer.
This community deserves real information.
