NIAGARA SPECIAL NEEDS STRATEGY UPDATE
June 2015
ONTARIO’S SPECIAL NEEDS STRATEGY
Ontario’s Special Needs Strategy Vision is:
An Ontario where children and youth with special
needs get the timely and effective services they need
to participate fully at home, at school, in the
community, and as they prepare to achieve their goals
for adulthood.
The provincial government asked local service provider
organizations in 34 Regions across Ontario, including
Niagara, to develop two proposals for the Ministry:
a.
b.
A proposal for Coordinated family-centred
service planning for children and youth with
multiple and/or complex special needs due in
June 2015; and
An integrated approach to the delivery of
rehabilitation services (speech-language
therapy, occupational therapy and
physiotherapy) due in October 2015.
This newsletter provides an update from the co-chairs of
the above planning tables and also an update on the
engagement that has taken place with staff and parents.
More information on the Special Needs Strategy can be
found at http://specialneedsstrategy.children.gov.on.ca.
COORDINATED SERVICE PLANNING TABLE
The Coordinated Service Planning Table consists of a
broad range of health, providers and educators and is cochaired by Yolanda Baldasaro (Niagara Catholic District
School Board) and Alyson Wilson (Bethesda).
The government’s strategy called for the creation of a
single Coordinating Agency (CA) in each service delivery
area through which families can access coordinated
service planning of services across sectors; dedicated
Service Planning Coordinators through each Coordinating
Agency who will lead coordinated service planning for
families of children/youth with multiple and/or complex
special needs by working with children’s services, health
and education sectors and one coordinated service plan
for each child/youth that takes into account all of his/her
goals, strengths, needs as well as all of the services that
the child/youth is and will be receiving.
The Planning Table undertook discussions over the last
few months on the attributes, skills and experience and
capacity that a Coordinating Agency would require to be
successful in delivering the government’s requirements.
At the April 17th 2015 meeting the Planning Table
selected the Niagara Children’s Centre to be the
Coordinating Agency for the Niagara region.
The Planning Table is currently
government template by developing:
completing
the
a)
A service delivery model that clarifies roles and
responsibilities (including a referral process)
within the region as the Niagara Children’s
Centre takes on the new CA role;
b)
Examining the supporting structures/processes
that would need to exist to allow information
and knowledge to be shared at the right time
and right place in the model; and,
c)
Estimating and developing a plan for the
resources that will be required to enable the
Niagara Children’s Centre to manage the process
and ensure that the right number of Service
Planning Coordinators are available for the
volume of work.
NIAGARA SPECIAL NEEDS STRATEGY UPDATE
PAGE 2
INTEGRATED REHABILITATION SERVICE PLANNING TABLE
The Integrated Rehabilitation Services Planning Table is
co-chaired by Oksana Fisher (Niagara Children’s Centre)
and John Dickson (District School Board of Niagara).
The new strategy aims to ensure that children will
experience a single seamless program of care for speech
and language therapy, occupational therapy and
physiotherapy services from birth through school exit.
reports/initiatives enabled the group to have a shared
understanding of what worked well previously so as to
apply it in developing the key characteristics that will be
required of the future system. The IRSPT is meeting
towards the end of June to discuss potential models of
organization that will enable the delivery of seamless
services.
The IRSPT Table has had two workshops to date. The first
workshop was focused on the current state and one of the
outputs from it was a mapping exercise that illustrated
which organization provided rehabilitation services across
the various age groups from 0-21 years.
The second IRSPT workshop focused on envisioning the
future state for rehabilitation services in the three
disciplines above. The workshop reviewed several key
report or initiatives that have occurred in Ontario over
the past decade that were focused on making the delivery
of
rehabilitation
services
better.
These
ENGAGEMENT SUCCESSES & CHALLENGES
Prior to initiating the work of the two planning tables we
engaged in a comprehensive engagement process that
entailed:
•
•
•
Having one-to-one or group conversations with
all the providers of care across the community –
this involved 23 organizations and over 35
people
A forum for front-line staff that was attended by
approximately 85 providers of care
With regards to Parental Engagement in our
process we have structured a Family Advisory
Council (FAC) comprised of 15 parents currently
receiving services. This group is meeting at key
points throughout our process and have met
twice so far, with a third meeting scheduled for
the beginning of June.
The FAC was
supplemented with an Open Forum for parents
which was attended by a further 13 parents.
We also structured input mechanisms from youth (an
Open Forum and an electronic survey) but had limited
success with their participation.
Key messages that we received from the consultation
included:
•
The feedback from all of the groups supported
the need for better coordination and
integration.
•
The issue of waitlists was a recurrent theme.
•
Parents indicated that much of the coordination
burden falls on them.
•
There was dissatisfaction with
rehabilitation model and capacity.
the
school
The detailed feedback has been distributed to the
participants
and
is
available
by
emailing
[email protected].
Finally, the FAC
reacted very positively to the announcement of the
selection of Niagara Children’s Centre as the coordinating
agency.
Should you have any comments/thoughts on anything in this newsletter please email:
[email protected].