Why MCCSS is going to under-spend AGAIN on the Ontario Autism Program, and by how much
As we had long suspected, and recently had confirmed by the FAO report on autism services in Ontario, the Ford government is under-spending, and they’re almost certainly going to do it again this year.
To understand where the money will go, let’s first look at the various cohorts of the roughly 39,600 kids who are registered for the program (as of the end of the last fiscal year):
- 6,400 in the legacy program
- 8,100 who had received either Childhood Budget (CB) or interim one-time funding (IOTF) cheques
- 19,200 who were sent a funding invitation, but not paid yet
- 5,900 who had not yet been sent a letter to apply for funding
I’ll break down each group, and estimate the spending that they may account for.
Legacy program kids
The FAO calculated an average yearly spend of $29,900 on each child in this cohort last year.
What’s new this year? Well, there’s an active global pandemic, which forced therapy centres to close for about 3 months in most cases, only recently re-opening. This will reduce the average spending per child by about 25% right off the bat.
It’s also expected that the number of kids in this cohort may continue to drop, as it did all last year, further reducing the spending on this group.
(6400 kids x ~$29,900) x 75% = ~143.5 million
If you factor in the likely drop-off of kids in this cohort, as well as kids easing back into therapy program schedules right now (and not getting their full hours right away), I’m going to place my estimate at $125 million spent on this group this fiscal year, which may even be generous.
For reference:
Cost in 2019/2020: $271 million
Cost in 2018/2019: $317 million
Childhood Budget kids, and Interim One-time funding kids (money received)
Of the 8,100 kids reported in this catergory by the FAO, we know from previous Ministry releases that at least 5,069 (as of the end of January) of these were CB kids. We don’t know how many more CB cheques were received in February and March, but it can’t be much, as CB invitation numbers were largely flat in the early 2020 months. Let’s estimate that the breakdown is about 5,600 CBs, and 2,500 IOTFs.
The kids who received IOTF will not be eligible for more money.
The kids who received a CB will be eligible for IOTF, assuming they fully spent and reconciled the full amount they received in their CB.
From the FAO report we know that the average spend on these kids was about $12,000/cheque ($97 million spent on 8,100 kids). So if we’re generous and say that every single one of those CB kids will receive a IOTF cheque in this fiscal year, at the same approximate spend:
~5,600 kids x ~$12,000 = ~$67 million
The accrued cohort
The FAO report confirmed that the Ford government was way behind on their spending in the last fiscal year, so $174 million was accrued from the last budget to spend on the 19,200 kids who were allegedly sent a funding invite, but not a cheque. This very large chunk of kids will cost the program $0 out of the current budget, as it’s all accounted for in last year’s $600 million.
The kids still waiting for anything
There were 5,900 kids who had not been sent a funding invitation letter as of the end of March 2020. There are also new registrations for the program in the current fiscal year, and these families are all still eligible to receive IOTF.
There was previously going to be a cutoff for IOTF that you had to be registered for the OAP before the end of the March in order to qualify, but this deadline has been delayed indefinitely, citing COVID-19 as a reason for it.
“We will establish a new deadline at a future date.”
My cynical thinking behind this, though, includes the Ministry fully realizing they don’t have anywhere to put their money this year, and are keeping this channel open to at least get some spending on the ledger with new registrants.
We can only guess how many new registrations there might be this year, but there were about 2,500 just in the first 3 months. I don’t suspect that pace is going to continue all year, as most kids with a diagnosis are probably on the list by now, but let’s say it reaches about 4,100 … just to get to a nice rounded number when we add it to the 5,900 already waiting.
For the average spend per child in this group, I suspect it will be lower than the average CB spend ($12,000), as there will be larger representation of the older kids only eligible for $5,000 instead of the $20,000 that the younger kids get.
I’m going to use $10,000, as this is a number I’ve used before based on age breakdown data obtained from FOI request information:
10,000 kids x $10,000 avg/kid = $100 million
Other costs
This includes non-therapy costs like diagnostics, administration, family supports, etc.
In the 2018/2019 budget it ran about $94 million, and in 2019/2020 it was only $67 million, likely due to tory-style cuts.
With foundational family services available again, we should be up closer to where it used to be. There are also new additions like the Hanen program, and CPRI workshops that would factor into this category.
I’m going to estimate this total “other” spend may be close to $100 million this fiscal year.
Okay’s lets add that all up:
With a budget of $600 million, they are likely to fall far short of that again.
The main problem:
THEY DON’T HAVE A REAL PROGRAM TO FUND
Unless core service become available soon, the government is going to leave about $200 million on the table, while families all across the province are in crisis.
This is unacceptable.
Even if core services were to become available next week, they have to start by transitioning kids into the program who are already fully or partially funded right now (such as legacy kids, and CB/IOTF kids with an early intake date).
No additional spending will even take place until they increase the amount of kids receiving a higher level of meaningful and needs-based support.
The first priority of the Ministry, as always, should be to have the full program launched as soon as possible. Their announcement last week of foundational services now being available as a “pillar” of the new program was a slap in the face to the community. This type of support was available previously, then taken away, and now returned.
This should not be applauded as progress.
With the government poised to potentially under-spend on this program even more than they did last year, how do they plan to make up the difference this time?
