Why the OAP waitlist numbers are misleading, and how MCCSS can fix them
On the 15th of every month a new set of numbers gets posted on the ministry website in a section titled “Information about the waitlist.”
If you click on the “monthly numbers “ link, it gives you this:
At first glance, you might wonder: Okay, so HOW MANY are on the waitlist?
That’s a good question, and one that’s NOT answered by the waitlist information page. It really doesn’t tell you much of anything. It’s not even clear what kids are actually waiting for.
Starting from the March 15th 2020 update, the Ministry switched to a vague and hypothetical approach to their monthly numbers post.
It used to look like this:
The old format gave the opportunity to see how many kids actually received their funding, as well as providing a way to calculate how many kids were still in service under the old version of the program.
Hers’s my modified chart for the same time-period to clarify some of the information:
The timing of the format change suggests it was brought in as a way for the ministry to show how many kids they had invited to receive the interim-one-time funding. The IOTF was first announced in December 2019, and I believe the first cheques were received by some families in either late January or early February 2020.
It would have been much more useful for the ministry to simply add a new column (“Families receiving interim one-time funding”) to their existing format. It’s very misleading to only show invite numbers, rather than document how many have actually received funding.
We can see the disconnect by looking at the Childhood Budget numbers both pre- and post-format change.
In the February 15th 2020 update, we were able to see that 5069 kids had received a childhood budget.
In the next month, they no longer showed how many kids had received their funding, but rather how many had been invited.
10,434 Childhood Budget invites were sent out as of the end of February 2020, with only 5069 Childhood Budget cheques dispensed as of the end of January. We have no way of knowing how many actual cheques went out after that, since we only have invited numbers going forward from there. The Childhood Budget system was supposed to end in December 2019, and replaced with IOTF, but we’ll see later that Childhood Budget invites were still being issued after that.
“All families on the waitlist who have not yet received a Childhood Budget will receive an invitation for interim one-time funding of either $5,000 or $20,000, depending on the age of their child, so they can begin purchasing services for their child.” — News Release, December 17, 2019
Either way, ~ 5,000 families were “sent invites” for Childhood Budgets, but didn’t actually receive their funding. It would be useful to know if anything was done to follow-up with these families to find out what happened there.
Were they sent an IOTF invite instead? Were they lost in the wind? Who knows.
Okay, so we know that their number reporting system is terrible, but let’s see what other information we can extract from their monthly updates.
How many kids are waiting for IOTF invites?
I wanted to look at this, starting from a point where we actually knew the answer. For anything past that, we can only estimate.
The only point of certainty comes thanks to the FAO report on Autism Services from July 2020.
At the end of the 2019/2020 fiscal year, we know the following to be true:
- 6,400 kids in service under the old program
- 8,100 kids had received a cheque by way of either a Childhood Budget or IOTF (mostly CBs at that point)
- 19,200 kids had been sent invitations for CB or IOTF, but had not received actual funding
- 5,900 kids who were registered for the OAP had not yet received an invitation for their funding yet
These add up to the rounded number of 39,600 kids registered for the program (at the time) that the FAO used in their report. Here’s the associated ministry numbers post from April 15th 2020:
If you’ve read my stuff before, you know I’ll often discuss the “unaccounted for” kids from the Ministry posts.
From the 39,618 total registered, if you subtract the number of kids who received invites to CB (10,434) and IOTF (16,877), you’re left with 12,307. This number represents a combination of the kids still waiting for an invite, as well as the number of kids in service in the old program. Thanks to the FAO report, we can easily break it down for this point in time:
12,307 (“unaccounted for”) — 6,400 in service under the old program (often referred to as “legacy kids”) = ~5,900 waiting for an invite
If we look ahead 2 months past the end of the fiscal year (June 15th update), take note of the number of IOTF invite number (23,769).
If we compare that to the IOTF invite amount from just 2 months before:
23,769 (June 15) — 16,877 (April 15) = 6,892 IOTF invites sent out during the months of April & May 2020.
If only 5,900 were waiting for an invite at the end of March, and 6,892 invites were sent out over the next 2 months, we can conclude that everyone registered for the OAP before the initial application deadline of March 31st 2020 should have received a funding invite.
This means that anyone receiving IOTF invites after that were newly registered kids benefiting from the pushed deadline (and more recently, kids who already received Childhood Budgets — more on this later).
Why are Childhood Budgets still going out?
I don’t think the Ministry has ever addressed this formally, but it’s become clear that there are kids in the old program who have been transitioned into Childhood Budgets rather than staying in their old behaviour plans.
From the OAP website, under “Transition plan for families with existing behaviour plans”:
“You will continue to receive services outlined in your child’s existing behaviour plan until its end date. Your behaviour plan can then be extended up to its current level of intensity, or less where clinically appropriate, until you transition into eligible core services offered in the new needs-based autism program.”
Nowhere on the website can I find anything about receiving a Childhood Budget next, rather than receiving extensions until the new program is ready.
If we assume Childhood budgets were supposed to stop at the end of 2019 (once the ministry started inviting people to IOTF instead), you would think it’s also safe to assume that new CB invites after that date were for people being moved out of the old program, and into a Childhood Budget instead. That may not be the case though. There was some anecdotal evidence to suggest that in early 2020 some kids on the waitlist were getting childhood budget invites, while others got IOTF invites. Like everything with this program, it was a mess.
If we compare the CB invites from the most recent number release (11,447), to the first CB invite number posted on March 12, 2020 (10,434):
11,447–10434 = 1,013 Childhood Budget invites (after the program was supposed to stop)
Whether it be by childhood budget transitions or other reasons, I think we can safely assume that the number of legacy kids has decreased by at least this amount over the last year (given previous trends), going down from 6,400 to probably closer to 5,000 (or less).
We know that there were over 10,000 kids in needs-based service under the old program before Childhood Budgets started, and that number has been been cut in half under the “care” of the Ford government.
Are kids being double counted?
Here’s where things really start to get messy, because it’s a change that the Ministry has not been transparent with in their tracking.
It was back in January 2020 that ministry spokesperson Palmer Lockridge said that families ..
“ …who have previously received a childhood budget may also be eligible to receive interim one-time funding once their current annual agreement expires provided that they have not yet transitioned into core services in the new needs-based autism program.”
We know that the first Childhood Budget contracts only started in June 2019, with the term lasting a year from the posted date on your letter.
This means that the first Childhood Budget agreements would have expired as early as June 2020.
Once a child Childhood Budget contract finishes, and you reconcile the funding, it’s expected you would then be invited to apply for IOTF. So one child could be counted in both invitation numbers of the ministry’s monthly update.
If we look again at the most recent numbers:
The 29,626 number may also include kids counted in the CB invite count.
If we calculate the “unaccounted for” number from this recent update:
45,992–11,447–29,626 = 4,919
In the past, this would have just been (legacy + waiting for invites), but now it’s more like (legacy + waiting — double counted = unaccounted for).
Using an estimate of 5,000 for legacy, and using the number of new applicants over the last month (555) as the number waiting for invites (assuming the ministry is keeping up within a month of application date, which may not be the case):
5000 + 555–4916 = 639 double counted
So there could be about 600 kids who have reconciled their childhood budgets, and have also received one-time funding. No way to be accurate on this though, since the ministry doesn’t share this info, and just lumps all the invites together.
Okay, so does knowing all this make the Ministry numbers make sense?
Still no.
I wrote a piece in September with a goal of trying to calculate the number of kids waiting for invites each month, as well as the number of legacy kids.
It led to finding some pretty shady-looking accounting on the part of the ministry. The posted numbers just seemed a little too convenient, and there were months where it looked like they we claiming to have invited more kids for funding then there possibly could have been waiting at the time.
The basic premise is that if you know how many new kids applied each month, and how many invites went out each month too, you could try and calculate the missing variables.
When crossover starts happening between groups though, the calculations start to break down.
I’ve tried to work out the kinks by accounting for possible double counting / overlap, but the numbers just don’t seem to add up. The ministry had to make corrections to their numbers a few times, and I simply don’t trust the numbers they’re presenting any more. The numbers seemed to go especially squirly last summer when the total registered number was adjusted in “a process of centralizing OAP data” previously managed by the regional providers.
Long story short, it shouldn’t have to be this hard to find out how many people are on the waitlist for funding … on a ministry page called “Information about the waitlist.”
How can the ministry make their updates better?
With core services being offered in the OAP in the near future, I propose a new format for the monthly numbers each month.
Simplify the system. Forget about “invitation” numbers. Consolidate the information.
The Ministry should provide just 2 numbers each month, and keep the previous months posted with each update to allow families to see progress:
- Number of children enrolled in core services
- Number of children waiting for core services
It won’t matter anymore how many kids are in the legacy program, or have only received a CB, an IOTF, or any combination of the three.
If you’re not in core services, you’re waiting for them. Simple as that.
If the first 600 kids are rolled into core services in March, like they said they would be, maybe the April 15th update could look something like this:
It’s brutal, but at least it would be honest.
