The committee met at 1:43 p.m.

[N. Simons in the chair.]

N. Simons (Chair): Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth. It’s really a pleasure to be here in Terrace, and I’m happy to see our committee members ready to go. It’s good to be in the traditional territories of the Tsimshian people.

I just have a few opening comments. Obviously, this committee is looking into an area and a sector that is very, very important to communities all across B.C., and it’s often a topic that gets overlooked in the overall child-serving system. I’m really pleased that our committee has taken this opportunity to conduct a special project in order to raise awareness about issues facing families and kids and service providers who are working with children with neurodiverse special needs.

[1:45 p.m.]

As you may know, our committee consists of members from two parties. It has membership from three parties, but we’re represented by two here today.

We started off, in our original early meetings, listening to submissions from the Ministry of Children and Families, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education to see, from their perspectives, what maybe their challenges were or what was working well. But today is our first public hearing, so I’m really pleased to be able to have you here.

Just for the awareness of the public, if they’re following along, the deadline for providing written comments to this committee is June 7 at 5 p.m. If you’re interested in finding out more about the committee, you can go to the Legislature website — leg.bc.ca — and click on “Parliamentary Committees.” What we’ll do with the information provided to us is report back to government what seem to be the priorities and issues of concern to people in the communities that we visit and the people they represent.

All our presenters will have ten minutes, and then we’ll have a few minutes for questions and answers. We’re obviously a little bit late today, and I’m sorry about that.

At this point, I’d like to ask members of the committee, starting with Teresa, to introduce themselves — just to say who they are and what community they represent.

T. Wat: My name is Teresa Wat. I represent Richmond North Centre.

L. Throness: I’m Laurie Throness. I represent Chilliwack-Kent.

E. Ross: Ellis Ross, MLA for Skeena.

M. Stilwell (Deputy Chair): Michelle Stilwell, MLA for Parksville-Qualicum.

N. Simons (Chair): I’m the MLA for Powell River–Sunshine Coast. I’m Nicholas Simons.

R. Singh: I’m Rachna Singh, MLA for Surrey–Green Timbers.

R. Glumac: I’m Rick Glumac, MLA for Port Moody–​Coquitlam.

R. Leonard: I’m Ronna-Rae Leonard. I’m the MLA for Courtenay-Comox on Vancouver Island.

N. Simons (Chair): Helping us today are Jennifer Arril and Stephanie Raymond, who seems to have disappeared. Simon DeLaat and Amanda Heffelfinger are on recording duties. They’re making sure that everything we say gets transcribed so that we can look at it and make sure we heard everything correctly.

Without further delay, I’m pleased to welcome Ceara and Brittney.

If you’d like to introduce yourselves and give us what information we should know.

Presentations on Children and Youth
with Neurodiverse Special Needs

KITIMAT COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CENTRE

C. Hutchinson: My name is Ceara Hutchinson. I’m a speech-language pathologist with the Kitimat CDC.

B. Mailloux: I’m Brittney Mailloux. I’m a behaviour analyst with the Kitimat CDC.

The representing members of the Kitimat Community Development Centre would like to, first, express our appreciation for the opportunity to convey our concerns and share our recommendations for improving services for individuals with neurodiverse special needs and their families in our community.

We are a non-profit organization of service providers that work with a wide variety of clients. We provide services to individuals with neurodiverse special needs of all ages across all domains of life, including but not limited to support with communication, behaviour management, life skills, physiotherapy and activities of daily living.

We would like to share the following concerns about access to assessment and services in our province.

C. Hutchinson: Firstly, wait-lists for accessing diagnostic assessments are too long. Currently our clients may be waiting anywhere from 18 to 24 months just to access an assessment from the Northern Health Assessment Network. This results in missed opportunities for accessing services that would greatly impact the functioning of our clients in their everyday lives.

B. Mailloux: There is a substantial discrepancy between the wait times for a private assessment and a publicly funded assessment for autism spectrum disorder. This discrepancy indicates there is a lack of incentives for qualified professionals to work within the public sector, which results in a disproportionate number of low-income, high-risk families unable to gain timely access to a critical diagnostic assessment.

C. Hutchinson: There are not enough outreach clinics offered to rural and northern communities like Kitimat. Currently, if a family from Kitimat is referred for a diagnostic assessment through the Northern Health Assessment Network, they are required to travel seven to eight hours to Prince George. In addition to the stressors of travelling long distances with children who have special needs, our families are required to incur multiple expenses, including mileage; accommodations for, potentially, multiple-night stays; and daily meals. This financial burden is simply not feasible for many of the families that we serve.

[1:50 p.m.]

Many of these families lack the capacity to overcome these barriers they face when planning such trips, which has resulted in individuals not receiving adequate diagnoses. This has a cascading impact and subsequently results in a strain on other resources in our community — for example, classroom teachers who have to manage challenging behaviours of a child who does not receive adequate support because they don’t have an appropriate diagnosis and designation.

B. Mailloux: Physicians and other health care professionals in our community do not seem aware of the importance of early identification of neurodiverse special needs, nor do they seem aware of the long wait-lists and the benefits of undergoing a diagnostic assessment — i.e., the assessment of funding following an autism diagnosis.

The wait-and-see approach is not evidence-based and is detrimental to our clients who wait to have concerns addressed and wait again after a referral is made due to the increasingly long wait-list. The process takes too long and results in missed opportunity for early intervention. Education for our physicians and health care professionals regarding the importance of immediate referrals for diagnostic assessment and early intervention should be provided from a provincial level.

C. Hutchinson: There is a general lack of understanding and access to information regarding the process of determining eligibility for assessment, which often results in the perpetuation of misinformation and makes it difficult for our organization to advocate for lower-functioning families. More clarity regarding the process from the health authorities who are providing the assessment is needed, including answers to our questions, such as: how often are outreach clinics occurring? How many clients are seen during one clinic?

Is there a better way to determine where our clients are on the wait-list? Which clinic should we refer to if dual diagnoses are suspected? Is the assessment process different for a child under the age of six versus a school-age child? We believe this information should be provided to us as service providers through education from and collaboration with those health authorities.

B. Mailloux: The intake process for individuals with suspected dual diagnoses is problematic and has resulted in our families travelling out of region multiple times in order to receive adequate assessment. If individuals must be required to travel such far distances for these assessments, the process should be more streamlined and completed in at least one trip. An initial intake process should be completed via telecommunication in order to ensure that the appropriate assessment will be administered prior to families leaving town.

C. Hutchinson: The level of support and intervention for individuals with neurodiverse special needs decreases significantly in our community after a child transitions into the public school system. There appears to be a total lack of resources, from there not being enough educational assistant support in our classrooms to huge caseload numbers for specialized services.

Just as an example, Coast Mountains school district 82 has one speech and language pathologist who covers all the schools in Kitimat and Terrace, which is ten schools. She has a caseload of 169 clients. This a huge decrease from the MCFD-funded early intervention contract for speech-language pathology in our community, which currently has a caseload of 60 individual clients. Our schools need more funding to increase the access to these services.

B. Mailloux: With regards to individuals with ASD who enter the school system, their access to funding from autism funding unit also drops significantly, presumably because of the transition to having support in a classroom environment. The amount of EA support provided is not commensurate to the support that was available prior to school entry.

We are seeing children who require full-time support being sent home or going without adequate support because the schools are not equipped with enough staff to supervise these children. More support positions are needed in our schools, which requires more funding per designated student being provided to our school district.

C. Hutchinson: Then finally, there is a gap between the years of 18 and 19, when an individual leaves the school system, and before they are eligible for services from Community Living B.C. This is too long for these families to go with nowhere to turn for services and puts these individuals at risk. So we feel a bridging program is needed for this transition period.

B. Mailloux: We sincerely thank the members of the Select Standing Committee on Children and Youth for taking into consideration the experiences and recommendations of the staff at the Kitimat Community Development Centre.

[1:55 p.m.]

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you both very much for your presentation. I’ll open the floor to members for questions.

L. Throness: Thank you for coming today. I have several questions that appeared as you spoke. When you’re talking assessments, are you talking only diagnostic assessments for autism spectrum disorder or FASD or other things?

C. Hutchinson: Predominantly for those two diagnoses: autism spectrum disorder and the complex behavioural developmental condition through the Northern Health Assessment Network.

N. Simons (Chair): Laurie, may I just ask for clarification on that? Did you say the complex behavioural? Is that a terminology, a phrase that we’re using now for a particular category?

B. Mailloux: Yes, for FASD. There are two streams when you make a referral: the autism spectrum disorder or the CBDC.

L. Throness: So the term for FASD is…?

C. Hutchinson: Complex behavioural developmental con­dition.

B. Mailloux: Depends on what you want the individual you’re referring to be assessed for. If it’s autism, it goes to the autism spectrum disorder assessment. If it’s not autism, if it’s something else, it goes to the CBDC.

N. Simons (Chair): Which captures every other particular….

B. Mailloux: A pediatrician or a physician needs to make a referral to one of those streams. Sometimes the referral isn’t adequate, and individuals have to do multiple trips.

L. Throness: Just a couple more if I could. Is there ever a mobile clinic? Do they ever travel?

C. Hutchinson: To Terrace? Yes.

L. Throness: How often do they travel to Terrace?

C. Hutchinson: We don’t know. We not privy….

B. Mailloux: We don’t know. Unless we would have a client who is far enough on the list to get into that outreach clinic, we’re not made aware of the clinics that are happening.

L. Throness: If there are not enough speech-language pathologists in the public system, are there private ones that are available that could be contracted, or is there like one speech pathologist in the region and that’s you?

B. Mailloux: We’re lucky to have qualified speech and language pathologists. I’d like to have one in our area.

L. Throness: It’s not necessarily a question of budget. It’s a question of availability of personnel as well.

B. Mailloux: Sure, recruitment.

L. Throness: Just one more question, if I could. School districts receive funds for children with special needs that are dedicated funds, but often those funds go to general revenue in the school district, not to support that child. Is that the case? I’ve heard that before.

B. Mailloux: Yeah. From our understanding of how it works, there are only certain diagnoses that generate EA funds. If you have a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, that individual generates funds. If you have a diagnosis of FASD, you do not generate any funds.

The school district is left with the principals determining how to take the funding they do have and spread it among the number of children who require the support.

R. Leonard: Thank you very much for your presentation. Getting a profile of your organization, how many professionals are at the child development centre in Kitimat? How many families do you serve? How old are you — not you personally, but the centre?

B. Mailloux: We serve families from zero to the Better at Home program, which is for seniors, and we have the early intervention contracts, as well as parent support. We have CLBC contracts for some individuals.

We really serve throughout your lifetime.

R. Leonard: What segment of the population are you serving? Hundreds? Dozens? I think I heard you say 60, but I wasn’t sure.

C. Hutchinson: That’s my caseload, specifically.

R. Leonard: That’s your personal caseload?

C. Hutchinson: Yeah, 60 families.

R. Leonard: That’s a lot.

C. Hutchinson: Yeah. It would be hard to say. I don’t know exactly how many families in total.

B. Mailloux: We could get back to you with that information.

R. Leonard: I’m just curious to see. How big is your catchment area?

B. Mailloux: We serve Kitimat and the Haisla community.

R. Singh: Thank you so much. My question is…. You said you serve the families from zero until…. The kids who are diagnosed with autism…. We have seen that usually under six, the services are provided by the organizations. But then most of the services are transferred to the school system.

[2:00 p.m.]

You have noted in your presentation, also, that that’s where the challenge comes, because the funding drops for the child. Do the families come to you and tell you what kind of challenges those are? I know they get EA support. Sometimes that EA support is not full-time. What other challenges…?

B. Mailloux: One of things we provide is transition meetings. So children who receive supported child development and attend our preschools and daycares, if they have special needs, we meet with the school at the end of the year before they start kindergarten, and we offer a transition meeting.

One of the challenges we’ve run into is that because the funding drops, sometimes the children who are starting school aren’t allowed to attend full days because of their behaviours. The Kitimat CDC is unique in that we have an applied behaviour analysis program and we offer ABA services to families. We have run some activities with those clients one-on-one, because the school wouldn’t allow them to attend. In some ways, we do provide some service, but not….

R. Singh: But that funding will come…. If they need to access your services, there needs to be access to that $6,000 that the family gets.

B. Mailloux: They have the $6,000, yeah. They go from $2,200 to $6,000 at the age of six.

R. Singh: Right. Thank you.

M. Stilwell (Deputy Chair): I’m just curious. SLP. You said you have a caseload of 60 kids. How often would you be seeing those kids? Is there a rule of thumb in the SLP world of how frequently you would need to make an impact in a child’s life and see them one-on-one and work with them one-on-one? Is there a general rule of thumb, and how often are you seeing these kids?

C. Hutchinson: My caseload is very diverse. It would really depend on what the presenting concern is. I do have a number of children who would benefit from multiple times a week, but there’s no way I can provide that. The children who get the most direct time with me are once a week, but there’s not necessarily a rule of thumb.

Some clients are more consultation. For some families who are really hard to access, I tend to access through their daycare or their preschool programs, and I provide more consultation with the staff working with them who do see them daily. It really depends on the client.

M. Stilwell (Deputy Chair): Just to follow up on that, how much of your time, then, is spent on teaching — training the trainer? So teaching the family, teaching the staff that are working with the individual to consistently do the same, same with the ABA, the programming.

C. Hutchinson: I would say…. I don’t know percentage-wise, but quite a bit is spent. I just ran a program with all of our SCD workers on working with children, because every client who’s on our support program has a communication-presenting concern. I’m working with the SCD workers, who are one-on-one, right now. And then, yeah, I do a lot of parent coaching, for sure, as opposed to direct treatment, because just the ability for me to provide direct is not always there.

E. Ross: Hi. I didn’t hear it in your presentation, but just in terms of numbers, is the number going up? Do you have a ballpark figure in the amount of clients that you actually service in the Kitimat area?

B. Mailloux: I would say the number’s increasing. It’s hard when we talk specifically about individuals with diagnoses. For myself, right now, if I speak specifically to the behaviour services we offer, the wait time, I only have one client under the age of six because the wait time is two years.

C. Hutchinson: I have currently ten clients on my caseload waiting for a diagnosis who could be accessing this service from Brittney, but are unable to because they don’t have the funding to pay for it. It’s a fee-for-service.

E. Ross: You mentioned the catchment area. You service both Kitimat and Haisla. Do the Haisla directly have any involvement, in terms of the funding, or is that through the local education agreement? Is there any information that…?

B. Mailloux: It’s all generally through autism funding, which is…. Once an individual receives a diagnosis, the funding goes directly to the parents. The parents need to oversee….

E. Ross: For the Haisla?

B. Mailloux: Everyone. Across B.C.

C. Hutchinson: Anyone. Kitimat and Kitimaat Village.

B. Mailloux: I have worked with Haisla families who have that funding.

E. Ross: Okay, thank you.

N. Simons (Chair): Yeah, direct funding, I believe.

T. Wat: Thank you for your presentation. I just noticed the point where they talk about the levels of core intervention for a child that transitions into the public school system. Once they go, there is a total lack of resources. I’m quite shocked to learn that.

[2:05 p.m.]

I’ve got two questions. The first one is: are you suggesting that the MCFD funding, right now, for special needs children, is sufficient? The second question. I guess it has been going on for a while. Have you been making your concerns known to the Education Ministry about this total lack of resources?

C. Hutchinson: In terms of the MCFD-funded contract, it doesn’t always feel like it’s adequate. But it’s certainly much more than when I compare to…. We compared, in this, specifically, the services for speech and language pathology because that is one of the services that is in the highest demand. So compared to that drop, it seems adequate. But I still feel like we could use more support with myself, my own contract, for speech-language pathology. That was the first question.

Have we made our concerns known to the ministry…?

T. Wat: Has this been going on for many years, the total lack of resources for the special needs of the school system?

B. Mailloux: I think it’s increasing as the number of neurodiverse diagnoses increases. So I think that each year the lack of resources increases.

C. Hutchinson: It becomes more apparent, for sure.

B. Mailloux: As far as making anyone aware, I mean, we do have a great relationship with the school. We have this conversation, but from the school’s point of view, the funding that they’ve received is what they receive. As much as we can advocate for one of our clients to get it, they have to take it away from another client.

C. Hutchinson: That’s something we’ve heard a lot: if we want it in one spot, it’s taking away from somewhere else. It’s not that they’re getting more. It’s that…. It’s just a shift.

T. Wat: So the overall is the same. Even though you have an increase in the number of children assessed with special needs, it’s still the same? It doesn’t go in proportion?

A Voice: It doesn’t seem to be.

T. Wat: Okay, thank you.

R. Glumac: Roughly what percentage of children you work with are autism versus fetal alcohol syndrome versus something else?

C. Hutchinson: I can speak to my caseload. Who has been actually diagnosed? Not many. I have ten out of 60 clients on the wait-list, right now, for an autism diagnosis. I don’t have any clients who have been diagnosed with FASD or have been referred yet. That seems to be a referral that happens later in life, in our community, anyways.

B. Mailloux: Generally, school age for FASD. In terms of autism referrals, Ceara makes most of them. It’s either a speech and language pathologist or a pediatrician. Speaking from the supported child development program, we have one child with a diagnosis of autism and many who are on the wait-list.

R. Glumac: So you generally don’t work with children with fetal alcohol syndrome?

C. Hutchinson: No, it doesn’t seem to be as common as autism.

R. Glumac: Okay, thanks.

N. Simons (Chair): I’m interested to know how you came to work in the north.

C. Hutchinson: Myself?

N. Simons (Chair): Yeah, sure.

C. Hutchinson: I’m from the east coast. I’m from New Brunswick. I went to school…. I did my master’s in the state of Maine. Coming back to Canada, I was really just looking for full-time, permanent work, and there’s not a lot on the east coast right now. I kind of took a chance on Kitimat, and here I am. I’ve been there two years.

N. Simons (Chair): Nice. Good answer. What about you?

B. Mailloux: I’m actually from Kitimat. I started off at the CDC when I was 19. I started off as an early childhood educator. I was mentored. I did my master’s, and then I became a board-certified behaviour analyst.

N. Simons (Chair): Excellent.

Are there any programs being offered in northern institutions that would help populate the profession?

B. Mailloux: Speaking for my profession, we really only…. Basically, the way it works is you need to work in a community and recruit your own clients because the parents are the ones who get the contract. There’s been a BCBA in Kitimat since, I believe, 2012. Terrace just had a professional move there in the last two years. Rupert still doesn’t have anyone. There’s no one all the way up to Prince George. The issue is that you need to find your own work, so who wants to move to a new community when you have to start recruiting?

Personally, I think that if contracts were offered to communities, specifically like what EIT has across the northwest, you’d be more likely to recruit trained individuals.

[2:10 p.m.]

Also, I think it would remove the barriers of parents receiving the funding and then having to oversee it, hire qualified professionals, train people to work as interventionists. It just seems like a huge barrier for parents who already have a child with special needs.

N. Simons (Chair): Well put. If there are no further questions and you have nothing else to add, I want to thank you for your presentation here. I was glad we were able to hear you. Thank you for doing the work you do.

We’re now going to hear from Heather and Fiona about their perspectives on the issue at hand.

It’s nice to welcome you here. Go ahead.

TERRACE CHILD DEVELOPMENT CENTRE

F. Delorme: Thank you very much for having us and for this opportunity to meet with you today. We are the Terrace Child Development Centre. We are a not-for-profit registered charity. We are in the Terrace area, so we provide services to Terrace, Thornhill and out at the lake. That is our area.

H. Callis: So it’s about 20,000.

F. Delorme: Yeah. It’s about 20,000 people. We have two buildings. One of our buildings is a cute little house with a little white picket fence, and that building has our pregnancy outreach program as well as our Building Blocks program. Then we have another building that has our early intervention therapies, supported child development, infant development program, and we also have our preschool program.

H. Callis: It was specially built for us…

F. Delorme: …in 1977. So we’ve been around for over 45 years. We’ve been working with children and their families in our community for the past 45 years.

H. Callis: For a long time.

F. Delorme: We are very fortunate that there is no eligibility criteria for early intervention therapy, other than a concern — of course, with caregiver permission. For the supported child development program, there is criteria, but for early intervention therapy, there is no criteria.

H. Callis: No prior diagnoses needed.

Our experience with identifying, monitoring and referral for service…. I think we’re really lucky in our community that we sort of foster really good relationships with other community service providers. We have regular meetings with social workers. We have monthly meetings with our pediatricians. We often will meet with public health nurses, or you know to call them up if you have questions. Also, we do have a new behavior consultant who, Brittney was just saying, moved to town about two years ago. We meet regularly with her as well.

At our CDC, we do things a little bit differently. We’re really lucky to be able to, for our referrals, follow more of a function-based referral service delivery model. We don’t actually currently hold a wait-list. But as clients come in, we kind of talk to the family, see what the concerns are, and then decide what would be best for those families.

F. Delorme: Looking at families’ needs.

H. Callis: Yeah. Although we don’t have a wait-list, our workloads are quite high and overwhelming at times.

F. Delorme: However, we still have a lot of children in our community that do not access our programs, for whatever reason.

[2:15 p.m.]

H. Callis: They’re often families that are not accessing many services in the community. So they’re hard for all service providers to sort of engage. Although this is, hopefully, improving. We’re trying to implement more trauma-informed practice, more family-centred practice, and be a bit more flexible on communication modes, on service delivery, on just trying to figure out: how we can provide service to these families in whatever way is most accessible to them.

F. Delorme: One of the ideas we have is to actually offer a drop-in group at our mall, where we know some of our families are at — looking at offering services or programs where they’re at.

H. Callis: Looking at some sorts of challenges, particularly with assessments. I know the Kitimat CDC was just talking about it. The autism assessments are a pretty big barrier in our community. Currently, it’s over 18 months, closer to two years, that families are waiting between a referral and actually getting the assessment.

There is occasionally outreach to Terrace, but mostly families have to travel to Prince George, which is equivalent to going from Vancouver to Portland. We were looking at the time difference. Imagine telling a family: “Oh yeah, you’re getting a community assessment. You just have to travel to Portland.”

F. Delorme: Sometimes these children have a difficult time leaving their houses. Their families have a difficult time going to a hotel, maybe eating food that they’ve never tried before, child care….

H. Callis: Yeah. I was going to say, with the assessment, you’re pretty much on your own. It can’t just be one parent to go, because when the parents are meeting with the professional, there’s nobody to look after the child. So two adults have to go — take time off work, have loss of pay to take this child to the assessment for at least a few days.

Many of our families don’t have transportation, so they have to take the medical bus. That’s a reality. We do occasionally get clinics that come. There’s actually one…. A colleague kind of fought for this family who’s having a really difficult time when we said, “This child can’t; there’s no way the family can get to Prince George,” so they are making an exception and coming in July to do five assessments. It will be the first time in about three years.

F. Delorme: It’s been a long time, yeah. That goes the same for medical appointments in Vancouver. Again, we’ll have our families…. We are very fortunate. We have a seating clinic that comes up twice a year. I say we’re fortunate, because can you imagine a family which has maybe a wheelchair, a seating, a stander, and they have to take all that equipment with them to an appointment in Vancouver and then take all that back? We’re fortunate to have that clinic come up twice a year.

Same with our psychology. We’ve been fortunate to have, from Sunny Hill…. And now, if we can find a psychologist, they will come up. Unfortunately, we’re limited for funds that we can use for the psychologists. They only want to come up if they can see six to eight children, and we don’t have enough funds to be able to support six to eight children.

H. Callis: In the past, Sunny Hill arranged that, and we had, as you said, a psychologist come twice a year. I think if they saw ten children each year for our community, that worked really well. But about five or seven years ago, that changed, and the province started giving individual child development centres the funding to find their own psychologist. That’s just been really difficult for us to find a psychologist. I mean, we’ve kind of pieced together what we can, but only a handful of children have really received psychology assessments in the last few years in our community.

Oh yeah, another point we were going to make was looking at funding — not necessarily for psychology but more for medical appointments down in Vancouver. Some people have coverage from their workplaces that cover travel to Vancouver and hotel stays and that. Then, other people may have access through their bands, which may cover that. But there’s a large section of our community who don’t have funding, so it’s just out of pocket.

If a child needs AFOs, ankle-foot braces, families have to go down to Vancouver two to three times to get one pair for fitting that. So that’s three return flights. That’s three hotel rooms. Unless you have a good job that has benefits, you’re paying for that.

[2:20 p.m.]

F. Delorme: It might be time off without pay as well.

H. Callis: So it’s difficult. I mean, our families do what they need to do, but it’s difficult for them.

A lot of our comments are about going from early years into the school age. I’m a speech therapist as well, so it’s going to sort of mirror, I think, the conversation that you had with the Kitimat CDC. There’s definitely a shift between more direct service in early intervention to all consultation, once people get to schools. Like they were saying, there’s only…. Ten years ago there used to be 3.5 SLPs in the school district. Now there’s one. It’s not just Terrace and Kitimat; they also do Hazelton and Stewart as well. It’s a very, very large area.

F. Delorme: Our occupational therapist and our physiotherapist provide school-age therapy. Again, it’s just consultation.

H. Callis: It’s a tiny fraction….

F. Delorme: It’s a very small amount, yeah.

H. Callis: The other challenge we’ve had with that transition from early years into the schools has been…. Ten years ago the schools had what were called integration support teachers, I think, at each school. So we could meet with them and tell them the children that were coming up and go into the concerns we had: “This is what we’ve been doing so far.” They could kind of take that and prepare their teachers and the principal and get things arranged.

About a decade ago, about ten years ago, that started shifting, and there just aren’t those people in the schools. We, as professionals, have information to pass on to the schools. Some of the teachers kind of think ahead, and the principals want to get this information and be prepared, but there are just so few. There’s nobody to sort of really take that and go. We’re finding it really, really hard to pass on the information. Sometimes we’ll talk to one kindergarten teacher, but then, over the summer, the child gets moved to a different classroom. So by September, it’s all changed.

F. Delorme: It’s changed. We do have…. Some families want kindergarten transition meetings, so that helps too, particularly if their family does change or they move to a different school or different area, or if the child is in a different class.

H. Callis: That’s all run through the schools. There’s only so much that we can do. One thing that we have tried to do is offer families that we can do kindergarten transition meetings in September, once they know what kindergarten class they’ll be in, so that at least when we’re passing on information, it will go to the correct teacher. That’s one thing that we’ve found, that we’ve learned, that is a bit more successful. Some families take us up on it; and some families don’t. It’s up to them.

Looking at what changes we’d like to see to eligibility and the assessment process for children, I think it’s recognizing that assessments and diagnoses are just a small piece for a lot of these children and a lot of these families. Looking at changing eligibility, on a greater scale and way in the future — hopefully, not too far in the future — it’s looking at eligibility for funding to be based on more current functioning and presenting need versus a specific diagnosis.

I don’t know how that would come about, but that’s sort of what we would love to see it going to. As I’m sure you’ve heard, there are so many families that have the need. They don’t fit into any of the pockets that generate funding, but their child has these huge needs. We have quite a few families who have very complex children with complex behaviours. We’d love them to meet with the behaviour consultant in town, but she is a fee-for-service, and if the family can’t afford it and they don’t have autism, then they can’t access that service. That part is frustrating to us.

F. Delorme: Yeah. It’s a huge barrier.

H. Callis: Another part is looking at opening eligibility for funding to other therapies. I mean, SLP, OT, PT are very important. You know all that.

F. Delorme: Foundational.

H. Callis: Yeah, those foundational services. We’re finding more and more need. We have a music therapist, a play therapist and an art therapist — actually, we have all three in town — who are wonderful. Again, unless you have autism funding or you have the means to contract them privately, you don’t have access to them.

[2:25 p.m.]

We’ve been quite lucky, and Fiona has been able to manoeuvre some funds.

F. Delorme: Yeah, we make it work.

H. Callis: We have hired a music therapist part-time for this past year, which has been really, really wonderful. It’s worked out really well. We find that our traditional therapies — OT, PT, SLP — are really enhanced by having the music therapy.

Our last comment would be that we’re receiving more and more referrals for behaviour and mental health concerns, which I think people…. You know, we are known in the community to help families that come to us, but we’re not geared to deal with that. We do have some child and youth mental health services in town that we can refer to, but I think it’s relatively limited.

We’ve had a ten-month-old who’s had very significant mental health concerns — a ten-month-old. Child and youth mental health is saying: “Oh, we can’t see a ten-month-old.” It’s not quite covered in our IDP. As an SLP, I don’t quite know what to do with him, either, so we’re really finding a gap with that. We are getting more and more referrals with anxiety and those types of children where we’re just finding that we want to help the families but we don’t have the tools to do so.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you very much. I look to my colleagues for questions.

M. Stilwell (Deputy Chair): A couple of things. Number one, you spoke about families being challenged and having to go to Vancouver and the costs of that. I just want to ensure that those families are accessing the TAP forms, the travel assistance program, because when they’re going for a medical appointment, they should be able to get, from their referring doctor, travel assistance so that their gas, their mileage, their flight or whatever is covered.

H. Callis: I’m not sure, exactly. Our OT and PT know a lot more about the funding, and I know they have a list.

F. Delorme: They have a list, literally.

H. Callis: They have a printout of different places. But I do know that some families do fall in the cracks and that they are paying out of pocket.

M. Stilwell (Deputy Chair): Sure. I know that many families aren’t even aware that it exists. It takes a doctor to give you the heads-up that it’s even available to them. Just as long as you’re doing what you can to inform the clients that you’re working with to ensure that there are supports for them in place. You know, one of the things I’m hearing…. Obviously, there are many obstacles. You’re also finding ways to make it work and stretch resources and provide the best service you can in your community.

Really, what we want to understand is when it comes to the actual process — we know there are wait times for assessment — of the assessment part, what are the challenges that you’re hearing from families on what their barriers are? Is it repetitive paperwork? Is it needing to go to multiple different providers to get different parts of the assessment? How can we make recommendations to government to simplify that process? If you simplify that, ideally that will speed up the process for more people to get the assessments as well. Do you have suggestions or comments on how we can streamline that process?

H. Callis: Specifically, like the autism assessment you’re talking about?

M. Stilwell (Deputy Chair): Sure.

H. Callis: Definitely…. Well, I don’t know why the wait-list time is 18 months to two years. I know that families do have a hard time filling out the paperwork, but we do have supports in town to help them. Then the travel and the support system for the assessment is what we hear families talking about.

R. Leonard: It isn’t pie in the sky to dream that we’re more centred on the functioning of the children and being able to deal with what their needs are. I hear more about kids who don’t quite make the grade to be pigeon-holed to access funding. I think that’s one of the challenges that we face: how do we serve all of the needs of the kids as they come through? I’m pleased to hear you say that. It isn’t the first time we’ve heard that. That’s good.

I guess the question, in that vein, is: when you are serving your clientele, what would you say is the percentage who end up being diagnosed and designated with autism spectrum, versus not?

[2:30 p.m.]

H. Callis: What do we have now? Well, you were just saying that we have a caseload of 99 for our speech therapy caseload, and I’d say we have about ten or 15 who either have a diagnosis or who we’re suspecting and are starting at that process.

For a lot of the children, we’re often the ones to meet the families first and kind of start this road with them. I’d say most of them now don’t receive a diagnosis until close to going to kindergarten or in school. So most of the children that we have concerns about autism don’t actually get diagnosed while we’re seeing them, because we just see them up until school age.

Did that answer your question?

R. Leonard: Yes.

F. Delorme: We have had two families, actually, pay for private assessments because they didn’t want to wait that long. So when you talk about… That’s one of the challenges.

H. Callis: When we’re talking about this and we know it’s a family who possibly could afford that, we do present that as an option to them as an alternative to waiting. Again, I don’t like that kind of disparity between some families who can afford it and some who can’t, but some families do kind of pool together, and you can get a diagnosis.

I think the family, once they actually made the referral to a private clinic in Vancouver, got the diagnosis within a month. Then they could get that funding and would have two years of the maximum funding before the child goes off to school. We are finding more families, if they can afford it, are choosing that option.

R. Singh: You were talking about how, when the child gets to school age, especially with the speech therapy, it becomes more consulting rather than direct services. We have heard that before too. Where would the parents get the service then? Where would they get direct service?

H. Callis: There’s somebody in town who is doing very part-time private speech therapy, but she’s only taking clients who have articulation issues. So if you have language or…. I don’t think she takes children who have autism. She has very specific…. She just works on articulation.

R. Singh: What about the kids who are before six when they’re getting the full funding? Do they have more access to the speech pathologist at that time?

H. Callis: They have more access to us public speech therapists.

R. Singh: But you cannot provide to the school-age children.

H. Callis: No. Well, I mean, I could if I wanted to also work privately.

R. Singh: Okay. And there are not enough private speech pathologists.

H. Callis: Yeah. As I said, there’s one who works part-time, but she only takes a very specific section of speech. She only works on articulation.

R. Singh: So that’s a gap. Those kids are left with that gap.

H. Callis: There’s no option. That’s right.

R. Singh: Thank you so much.

F. Delorme: We also have a speech-language pathologist through Northern Health who provides services for zero to six, but it’s a very small percentage of their time. I don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s very small, because he also does adults.

Interjection.

F. Delorme: Oh yeah, that’s right. He’s public too. Yes, that’s right.

R. Singh: But they are not providing the private service.

F. Delorme: No.

L. Throness: Just a few quick questions. When a child gets in for an assessment, are they ever turned down, or is it really that you just have to get through the door, and then you’re going to be okay?

F. Delorme: Are you talking about an autism assessment?

L. Throness: Yeah, an autism assessment. Do they ever fail that assessment, say: “No, you don’t have autism”?

H. Callis: Fortunately and unfortunately, yes, it does happen reasonably often that they don’t get the diagnosis. They still have behaviours that…. You know, the therapists were concerned. The pediatrician was concerned enough to make the referral to this. But if they don’t get the diagnosis, they don’t get anything. They don’t get funding.

The family is still left with a child with very, could be, significant behaviours. Okay, it’s not autism. What are we going to do? We still need to go home and deal with this every day, and now we just don’t have the monetary support to do that.

L. Throness: How long does it take to actually do an assessment?

H. Callis: I think it takes about two or three days. They do a number of….

L. Throness: Is it all day for two days?

H. Callis: I think they meet with the parent for one or two hours, and then they’ll meet with…. I think there’s twice that they see the child for one or two hours. I think it’s done over two or three days, but it’s just a few hours at a time.

I know there’s a parent interview component, and I believe they see the child twice, but don’t quote me on that.

[2:35 p.m.]

L. Throness: One further question. You said that with some families, you’re reaching out to them because they don’t access services on purpose. Why would a family not access services?

H. Callis: I didn’t mean on purpose. It’s more…. If families are living out of their car or have food insecurities, they are concerned about their children, but they’re about to be evicted. There are other issues that are a bit more pressing today, you know, than getting speech therapy for their child. It’s not that they don’t want it, but they’re just not in a place that can….

E. Ross: In terms of the services you were talking about that are lacking in this area, how big of a problem is recruitment? If it is a problem, is it similar to the problem we have with recruiting doctors and nurses to this area?

H. Callis: Yeah. We have been pretty lucky that generally, at least at the child development centre, we’ve had the core therapists. We’ve had an empty position now and then, but we’ve generally been pretty well. But it is very difficult to recruit. Our physio, unfortunately, moved in December. We are doing some interviews now for someone, hopefully, to maybe start later in the fall, but that will be almost a year’s gap of physio services in our community.

E. Ross: Is it similar to the recruitment of doctors and nurses, where you have to have a full incentive package plan from all different kinds of groups and protocol leaders?

F. Delorme: I would say somewhat. We are able to offer some benefits. We’re non-union, so we don’t have a pension plan per se, although we do have RSPs that we can contribute to, and we keep up with non-union wages. We also provide professional development. We also talk about how we are a pretty fun place to work at, and that Terrace is beautiful.

H. Callis: We’re not as organized as the doctors to have sort of a full package, but we try to promote what our child development centre does offer.

F. Delorme: Yes, what we can offer.

H. Callis: One thing that the government used to offer, which I was lucky enough to benefit from ten years ago, was a B.C. loan forgiveness program where for each year you worked in the north, you got 33 percent of your B.C. section of your student loan paid off. Actually, that’s how our physio came up.

F. Delorme: Yes, that’s right.

H. Callis: I grew up here, but it helped draw me back here to do that. It was just sort of that little incentive. I’m not sure if that’s still going on or not.

F. Delorme: They made some changes. I’m not sure either. We don’t have anybody who can access that.

N. Simons (Chair): Thanks for raising it. That’s great.

T. Wat: First of all, thank you for your passion and your commitment to helping children with special needs. I really appreciate that.

Your centre is called a child development centre. I heard you talk about moving to schools, but I haven’t heard you talking about once they reach the age of 18 or 19, and they move into adult age. Is there a community centre in Terrace that looks…?

F. Delorme: Not in Terrace. No, we only have the early intervention part.

H. Callis: We didn’t touch on that because we mainly deal with zero to six, and then, as we said, our occupational therapist and physiotherapist do through the school age. So most of us don’t deal with that.

T. Wat: Is there any organization that deals with it in Terrace?

H. Callis: I believe there is, but I hesitate to comment on that, because I don’t know a lot about their services.

T. Wat: Okay. Can I have another question, Chair?

N. Simons (Chair): Yes, Teresa.

T. Wat: You talk about how some parents just cannot afford to go to Vancouver, because of various reasons, for treatment or for assessment. Do you have any statistics so far that can show how many parents cannot afford to go to Vancouver and miss out on the assessment or the treatment for all these years?

H. Callis: I’d hope…. As Michelle mentioned, there are different funds and different charities that you can apply for. Again, I’m often not the therapist to deal with that part, but I know that our OT and PT do help families try to find funding sources. I know that sometimes their trips aren’t covered, but I do believe…. I don’t know if it’s really that a family wouldn’t go. I think we can always try to find something. Or they pay out of pocket, and they just do that because that’s what their child needs.

F. Delorme: Exactly. We’ve helped some families as well. Some of our fundraised dollars we have into a travel fund for those families. Maybe they’ve got their transportation paid for, but they still lose wages, because maybe they don’t have benefits through their work. Then we would give them some money so that they could buy some food.

H. Callis: That’s as a last resort.

F. Delorme: Yeah, as a last resort once we’ve gone through all of our huge list to see, and we’ve gone through social services — whatever is on our list.

[2:40 p.m.]

H. Callis: It’s just not a very organized system. It’s families and the therapists trying to get at different charities, kind of going through the list and trying to find anybody that will cover that.

F. Delorme: To help the family out, yeah.

T. Wat: Do you see that as a very serious challenge?

F. Delorme: It impacts a few of our families. I wouldn’t say it impacts all of our families, but it’s a few of our families.

H. Callis: Especially the families with children with more physical needs who need to go to Vancouver for surgeries or to get new braces and different things like that.

N. Simons (Chair): Well, Heather and Fiona, thank you very much on behalf of the committee. Thank you for doing the work that you do and for bringing some really key issues to our attention. Thank you for coming.

We’re a little bit behind schedule, but we’ve had a couple of cancellations. Let’s do a recess, one minute.

The committee recessed at from 2:41 p.m. to 2:42 p.m.

[N. Simons in the chair.]

N. Simons (Chair): Margaret Warcup, thank you very much for coming today. Welcome to the committee, and thank you for being here. Go ahead.

MARGARET WARCUP

M. Warcup: Okay. Thank you. I have some speaking notes. I always divert. I can probably echo a lot of what my colleagues prior have said. But I’ll try and stick to my script. Those that know me, you’ll know it’s difficult.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak. I’m pleased that the province is addressing this issue. I do have some concerns that we are doing multiple consultations in this area, and I’m not seeing the impact of those consultations as part of the dialogues that are happening. I’ll refer to a couple of those as I go through.

I know it’s a complex system. I’ve worked in it for a long time. I’ve been 40-plus years in northern B.C., providing physiotherapy and then administrative services for CDCs. I was honoured previously to be appointed by the Minister of MCFD to be on the child care council and continue to work on having universal child care in the province.

One of my first messages, in terms of looking at this, is that I think we need to do a better job of linking child care to the needs of children and families that are experiencing a child with barriers in their development. I would put that forward in terms of how we need to have a more integrated system of services.

With that, I also heard the questions in terms of resources and staff. I think with early years’ services, we really need to do something about recognizing early childhood educators and educational assistants in the schools as being professionals and have them regulated appropriately so that they’re competency is done that way.

Secondly, in introducing myself, I’m also a school trustee, so I was very interested in the questions on education. I’m not speaking on behalf of my board of education. I did urge them to present to you, so hopefully, you will get something that way.

I do, personally, support the review of funding that’s happening for education. I read your Ministry of Education presentation on how diagnosis is used to categorize children and then go to the funding. I welcome the look at the new models of funding. I don’t think there’s enough information out there for us to actually know what the prevalence model means and whether it’s the right one or not. I think there needs to be more discussion there.

I would support that we move to the functional evaluations and use and funding based on needs. I strongly believe in using the international classification of functioning and disabilities and looking at strengths of families and where their barriers for development are. I know Canada has accepted it. I know it’s expensive to fund it that way, but we need to move our system to funding based on needs so that every child receives services.

[2:45 p.m.]

I reacted to reading the presentations that you have already received from the Ministries of Health, Education and MCFD, and my reaction was that we’re still not integrating our services. We’re still not speaking the same language to each other and trying to have services that become streamlined so that parents can navigate and find the service they need and so that services complement each other instead of duplicate each other.

The example just recently of that is with MCFD’s new early years programs for drop-in centres. It’s very similar to the StrongStart programs. Why are we duplicating services when we have an acute, chronic need for what the Ministry of Health explained to you were tier 2 services, which are the therapies, the psychologists and the extra services that our previous speakers spoke about?

I already mentioned that I am concerned about the number of reviews. My concern is that people are hearing the stories — KPMG, yourselves, etc. We’ve also had a review of kindergarten transition throughout the province. The consultations were done extensively. That report has not been released so that we can have some dialogue on what the recommendations were to implement. I think we need to have that.

There was a report many years ago in terms of school-aged therapies and why we are stuck on the consultation model and not moving forward. I urge that your committee, which is much more public than some of the other consultations, release these reports and have dialogue with those that are hands-on with the children and the families in our province so that we can implement some of these recommendations and not just keep brewing them. That was my pet peeve, or whatever.

I’m also an accredited surveyor for CARF accreditation for services. That’s what I do so I can travel in my retirement. I do believe that all of our services should be accredited. I think the fragmentation that’s occurring or the discrepancy that’s occurring for services that need to be accredited and the fact that we are not yet accrediting Indigenous services is causing a rift in our service quality and access for services.

I’ll look to Ellis for my next one because I’ve already met with him once, in that I am concerned right now that I want to understand reconciliation. I want to be part of it. I want all of us to be culturally confident and everything to be culturally safe.

I do see, and I ask the committee to think about asking some questions about, how some of the funding that’s coming down for our children living with barriers and needs is actually causing a schism between services and is not funding based on needs. It’s funding based on being Indigenous and fragmenting our services. It’s not pulling them together. So I ask that you consider that in your review in terms of thinking about how we can have integrated services for all children who have barriers in their development.

I already mentioned that tier 2 services are chronically underfunded. I really do believe that if monies are put into functional needs assessments and then allow time for diagnosis to occur…. I’m not saying diagnosis is not important, but using a diagnosis to drive the funding of our system is causing too many problems. There are children missing services and having access to services that way. There are too many wait-lists.

If I think about school-aged children having to have a diagnosis before they get funding to come in and receive services in terms of educational support or other supports in the system, it’s often a barrier. We know from the Ministry of Education that children who need a diagnosis often don’t get seen and done enough until about grade 3. Well, that’s too late for early intervention. We need to do it earlier, which is why I believe that we need to do more screening, more reliance on tier 2 therapists, etc., to be able to provide needs-based services instead of relying on the diagnosis to drive funding.

I really liked your quality — whatever her name was, after the Ministry of Education…. The report that she gave you where she talked about accountability of the interministerial committees in terms of looking at these services — I really think we need to push for some of that. I hear, often — some of you know, I open my mouth, and I come to Victoria and do different things — that they’re meeting and they’re talking to each other, but I don’t see the result of that on the floor. I do believe that the quality support analyst is absolutely right.

[2:50 p.m.]

Secondly, she’s absolutely right that we need to do something about the data collection that we have in our province that way. I had said, for many years, that I would retire once I solved the SIRF problems of stats in MCFD in terms of identifying needs for children living with special needs. I gave up and retired and went on to other things. But we’re not collecting the data that you need to make informed decisions on which child needs how much services, etc. We need to solve that.

The three systems of care — Health, Education and MCFD…. Their data systems don’t correlate with each other. We’re not looking at common data elements. It’s fragmented, and it’s not giving us the information we need to make good decisions that way.

Then, transition to CLBC services. I know it was a question. I’m honoured that, in a couple of speakers here, Monique will come and present to you about transition. I certainly do have some issues about CLBC, but she’s lived and breathed it with her child. She’ll come and share where the concerns are there.

I welcome questions, and I didn’t read one of my notes.

N. Simons (Chair): Margaret, thank you very much for giving us your insight into the sector. I’d just say that this committee, I hope, is part of that — addressing the fact that we see silos and we see fragmentation. Being an all-party committee with the ability to make recommendations to government, including their internal structures and processes, including their interministerial meetings and such, I think you’ve provided us with some really important information. I thank you for that.

Do we have questions from the members?

R. Glumac: I’m just wondering if you have any more information on all of these other consultations that have been happening.

M. Warcup: I’ll send them all to you. I had a list, and I knew…. I was going to print it off. There’s KPMG. There’s an Aboriginal one. There’s the kindergarten transition report…. Maureen’s going to kick me, but I’m going to Ethiopia with her later. She’s doing one on success in transition to schools with the Ministry of Education. There are multiple consultations occurring throughout the province.

You might ask the parent who’s coming next, because she went to a few of them. The parents are getting tired of being asked and not seeing results. I hear that a fair amount.

R. Glumac: If you could send that information…

M. Warcup: I’ll send you the list.

R. Glumac: …that’d be great.

M. Warcup: Yeah. Sorry, my memory is not that great with them.

L. Throness: You talked about how government policy is driving a schism between those who receive Indigenous services and kids who are non-Indigenous. Could you give an example of what that looks like on the ground?

M. Warcup: Look at the last RFP for earlier services in terms of how the funding went out to different groups. I can reassure you that in Prince George, you’re going to hear more about the schism from my colleagues. Look at IDP and Aboriginal IDP — both exactly the same types of services, and different funding streams and different accountability requirements for it. A child is a child, you know? I would look at those two, to start off with.

Family support. I would look at what’s happening with family support contracts. I really strongly…. What’s his name — the book I read just recently? We’re going to try to get him up here from the Island. Yeah, it’ll come.

E. Ross: My memory is worse than yours.

M. Warcup: Thank you.

I’m really struggling that we don’t all have cultural competency plans and that we’re not all, as service providers, being culturally competent, safe and able to serve any child and any family, instead of having the fragmentation that’s happening right now.

L. Throness: One other question. You talked about data collection, and you talked about how MCFD and Health and Education data are not asking the same questions. They’re not collecting the same data. Could you just elaborate on that and those problems a little bit?

M. Warcup: In the Ministry of Education, we have a whole system of collecting data. Children that go to StrongStart have an educational identification number. Those are children under six. MCFD doesn’t use that, so there’s no correlation in terms of whether they attended StrongStart or whether they attended something else or where these children are not receiving services.

[2:55 p.m.]

We don’t count the number of children served with the same definitions. In MCFD, we count minutes of service that a therapist has hands-on with a client. So if I’m fixing your wheelchair, and you’re not in the room, my service hours don’t get counted. There are all these definition challenges where we can’t use the data to show we’re making a difference to the children and the outcome. We should be moving away…. Count enough to know, what monies you paid me to provide a service, that I’m actually providing a service, and then let me work on documenting outcomes — that I made a difference to the child.

E. Ross: Trying to sum it up here, do you think the problem, in terms of data collection, is continuity, relevance and standardization? Is that how I’m hearing it?

M. Warcup: Yup. Simplify it to contract accountability and move to outcomes. Move to what accreditation does that makes you look at your service. Are you making a difference versus counting widgets? Every time a person is in the room with you, you can put down a data element. If they’re not there and you’re thinking or researching, it doesn’t get counted.

There are too many values being put on that data that’s being sent in. It’s not being used, to be honest. I have worked with contract managers who, over the years, obviously didn’t even know how get onto the program that we are all mandated to do. It wouldn’t be beyond me to play a little game with that.

T. Wat: Margaret, from your brief presentation, I’m really impressed that you seem to know what’s going on. You have so much experience and so many observations and so much input. I’m sorry to hear that you’ve seen so many public consultations — doesn’t seem to be any outcome.

We cannot expect government to make changes as fast as we all want to. Just imagine if you have one ask to the government that you wanted to be done. What is your number one ask?

M. Warcup: I got the same question when I defended my thesis for my master’s. I was writing on health care regulation at that time. Anyways, at that time, the Premier was supposed to fix what was happening with regulation of health people.

Today if I reflected…. I mean, your number one ask is…. I think you need to link child care, and what’s happening with universal child care, with early-years services, and move it to functionally based needs services. Then leave the diagnosis stuff to evolve, because we don’t have enough money to fund accessible diagnosis throughout the province totally. We’ve got to start where those kids get services early and serve that way. And I would get rid of individualized funding.

N. Simons (Chair): It’s really appreciated when those are the kinds of things that we want to contemplate. I think, as much as I appreciate the fact that other reviews are taking place, this is a review that is taking place at a different level.

We have an expectation that our report will be more than just considered by government. I hope it’s…. I’m looking forward to the rest of the presentations as we travel a bit. I wanted to say how appreciative we are of your time to come and present to us.

M. Warcup: You’re welcome. It was good to see a lot of faces again. I’ll get you that information. I am going to stay. Monique is right behind me.

N. Simons (Chair): We’ll take one minute. I like a one-minute recess.

The committee recessed from 2:58 p.m. to 3:02 p.m.

[N. Simons in the chair.]

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you very much, committee members. We’re getting a lot of good information today, and it’s a pleasure to welcome Monique as a witness to our committee.

We look forward to hearing your perspective on the topic at hand.

MONIQUE MALENFANT

M. Malenfant: I guess I should start with a little bit of history, then. My daughter, who is 35 years old, was born with epilepsy and autism. Now she has Crohn’s and cancer, so we’ve been through a lot. I’ve also worked at the CDC for 30 years off and on, and I’ve been on the board, so I feel like I have some experience about some of the things that have been going on through the years.

I guess my biggest issue currently, and for a while now, has been respite for adults. Before Katrina turned 19, things were working. They were difficult, but they were working. But when she turned 19, we lost all respite. There was none to be found. So for two years, we tried to do it by ourselves, completely. Of course, things fell apart.

I phoned…. I was told that when you needed help, this was where you phoned. And they were expecting our phone call, because of course we couldn’t make it work. So she went into care. That was the solution to us not being able to work with nothing — to put her into care. That’s what you do. It was not what we wanted, and it was not the best solution for us, but we also made that work.

[3:05 p.m.]

Then, supposedly things changed. The money that was in foster care for Katrina now became Katrina’s money. So we brought her back home, thinking we could make this work. But we couldn’t find…. We had money for respite, but we couldn’t find anybody to do respite — for two years. Then she had a day program that, most of the time, she was too sick to go to. So even though, on paper, it looked like we were getting services and we were getting help, in reality, we were not.

I just feel like this number 19 that happens is a disservice, because they don’t become adults just by turning 19. I know that some disabled people go into adult services, and they do quite well. Our daughter is not at that level, and she never will be. So based on need, why did it change? It shouldn’t change. It should be based on what this person needs.

When Katrina was in foster care, the foster mom got a one-on-one worker for four hours a day. She got money for a housekeeper. She got…. There was something else that she got. I can’t remember now.

N. Simons (Chair): Respite?

R. Leonard: That’s because you didn’t have it yourself.

M. Malenfant: Yeah. That never happened for us.

I mean, even when we wanted to bring Katrina back home — and we were quite adamant about that, because Katrina was miserable — they pretty much put up a fight against it and said: “You know you can’t change your mind after this, right? Are you sure this is what you want to do? This is costing us more for her to come back home than to keep her in foster care.” I’m like: “How can that be? We’re getting a third of the services that the foster person was getting, but it’s costing you more?” It just didn’t make any sense to me that I was even told that. Plus their mandate was: “We keep families together.” It doesn’t quite hold up to the attitude that I got. Anyway, it’s just a thing.

That’s our biggest issue right now. Why are we not getting the help that we need when other people are getting the help that they need? The only difference that I can see is that the other people are in foster care, and Katrina’s at home with her parents. I don’t get it.

N. Simons (Chair): Can I just ask for a clarification, Monique?

M. Malenfant: Sure.

N. Simons (Chair): When you say foster care, is it sort of like a home-share situation?

M. Malenfant: No, this was foster care. Because at that time — we’re talking about ten years ago — home share was not working.

N. Simons (Chair): Okay.

M. Malenfant: We’ve actually been on the home-share waiting list for six years, and nothing’s happened. We haven’t even had one interview or one family interested. It’s probably because, well, Katrina’s not exactly an easy child to take care of. I realize that.

N. Simons (Chair): Fair enough. Fair enough. That’s a long time to be waiting.

M. Malenfant: It’s a long time to be asking for help.

N. Simons (Chair): Yeah. I’m presuming that Community Living B.C. did a guide to support allocation, a GSA, to see what she was eligible for.

M. Malenfant: Yeah. I’m assuming.

N. Simons (Chair): How old is your daughter now?

M. Malenfant: She’s 35.

N. Simons (Chair): Well, I appreciate you sharing this, because it’s important for us to hear the actual family stories and to hear the impacts things like difficulty in accessing service can bring.

I’m sure my committee members have questions. Perhaps they’re absorbing.

A Voice: Monique, share your hospital challenge, please.

N. Simons (Chair): Ah yes. Go ahead.

M. Malenfant: Well, in the last two years, Katrina has been diagnosed with cancer and Crohn’s. She’s been in the hospital six times, three different major surgeries.

The problem has been that while she’s in the hospital, one of us needs to stay with her. Somebody needs to stay with her, because she’s been known to pull out her central line and do things that she’s not supposed to be doing. Plus she needs someone to call the nurse at any time, because she’s not able to do that. She’s non-verbal, basically, so she won’t ask for help when she needs help. So one of us needs to stay with her 24-7.

[3:10 p.m.]

The concern has been that I have gone to Thompson, her day programming, and said, basically: “I would like someone to do a shift — four hours, six hours.” What they were able to offer, at the beginning, was: “Well, we’ll go there for an hour so you can go out and have some lunch.” And it’s like: “Okay, we’ll make that work.” But my husband and I were doing 12-hour shifts at the hospital to stay with her. That’s happened many times.

Then, just a couple months ago, I got a phone call from someone at Thompson, the day program. I think she was speaking on behalf of CLBC, which is the funding program. She said to me that next time Katrina gets hospitalized, they won’t be able to send anybody over, because that’s just not what they do. I said: “Well, who does it? Who is supposed to help us? Because 12-hour shifts are a little difficult.” She said: “The hospital. That’s the hospital’s responsibility.” And I’m like: “Are you kidding me?”

One time I asked the nurse to stay with her for 20 minutes while I did an errand, and when I came back, Katrina was all by herself. She said that she just can’t do it, because they have six patients that they’re trying to take care of. There’s just no way that the hospital would say yes to a private nurse or a nurse that could be with just her.

I went to CLBC. I phoned Nancy Thibeaux. I asked her: “What are we supposed to do the next time Katrina is hospitalized? There will probably be a next time.” She said that she would look into it. She did look into it, and she basically said that Thompson is supposed to provide a one-to-one worker, because when Katrina is at Thompson, she’s supposed to be getting a one-to-one worker. That’s her classification.

She’s never gotten a one-to-one worker. She’s always been in a group with a worker or two. So what they say they provide on paper, or what we supposedly get funded for, is not necessarily what happens. I think, in reality, they can’t provide what they say they’re supposed to provide, because — I don’t know — the money isn’t there. They make do with what they’ve got. I don’t know. But what we are told that we’re supposed to get or what Katrina needs is not what’s being provided.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you. You’ve been quite clear.

Are you contracting Thompson, or is CLBC contracting Thompson?

M. Malenfant: CLBC is contracting Thompson for her day programming, yes. And the respite money that we get is…. We hire them, we pay them, and we get reimbursed.

N. Simons (Chair): They find the provider?

M. Malenfant: No, we’ve had to find the provider. It took us two years, but we did find them. We did manage to find someone, just three months ago.

N. Simons (Chair): Well, I’m glad.

L. Throness: Just a few to clarify. So you get funding, yourself, from CLBC to provide respite care?

M. Malenfant: Yes.

L. Throness: Your husband and you have been doing 12-hour shifts at the hospital, but you couldn’t hire someone to fill in for you there?

M. Malenfant: Actually, we did. We ended up taking Katrina’s respite money and hiring someone for four hours in the evenings, occasionally. It covered about two hours a day while she was in the hospital.

We get paid $450. That’s supposed to give us two weekends a month. When we were hiring someone one-to-one for the hospital, we were paying them $20 an hour. It doesn’t go very far. But it was very helpful, actually. It was helpful.

Now that we have someone who’s doing overnight respite for us, she’s actually charging me, for a 48-hour period, $400. So the two weekends that we’re supposed to get for $450 is actually covering a weekend and a couple of hours.

[3:15 p.m.]

N. Simons (Chair): To be clear, do you know anybody who is managing to spend…? Is anyone getting respite for a lesser amount than that?

M. Malenfant: No. When I first hired her, we talked about prices and stuff, and I said: “Well, this is what they told me that this would buy me.” She’s like: “No, no. This is what I charge, and I have charged other people the same amount.” I can’t argue with her, because we desperately need her.

N. Simons (Chair): Yeah. Thanks, Monique.

Laurie has a follow-up.

L. Throness: Just one question if I could. The respite worker that you hired — do they have some kind of special training, or is it a friend or…?

M. Malenfant: This is actually what she does for a business. In her home, she takes care of disabled adults. She has one full-time and some that she does respite for. She’s been doing it for 20 years. Before that, she worked for Terrace and District Community Services.

L. Throness: So it’s more an experience-based thing — that she has a lot of experience in that?

M. Malenfant: She has a lot of experience, and she’s been doing it for a long…. Yeah.

E. Ross: A similar question. I’ve never heard of a respite worker before, so I’m wondering about the qualifications and the training. Is it specialized? And in finding a respite worker, is it a supply and demand problem?

M. Malenfant: It must be supply and demand, because honestly, the first thing I got told when I got the respite money was: “Contact people that you know, because people that you know, know Katrina. Therefore, you’ll find someone in that to take care.”

E. Ross: So it’s not something you go to school for. It’s something…. You get the money, and then you don’t get any training?

M. Malenfant: Some people have higher qualifications. Some people have ECE. Some people have experience more than education. Some people have worked for the school district, for group homes. A lot of them are experience-based though.

E. Ross: So it’s not regulated per se, specifically for respite workers?

M. Malenfant: No.

E. Ross: Okay, thanks.

R. Leonard: Thank you so very much for coming and speaking with us today about a very personal journey that you’re on, and it’s been going on a long time. I can’t imagine what it’s like having to navigate through a system that is as complicated and changing as it has been for you over the decades. I just wanted to honour your own resilience to be able to be here and share this story to try and make things better.

I guess the question I have when we’re talking about respite or support workers…. You’ve mentioned the paucity of workers out there in a remote, rural, northern community. I’m wondering if you get help from CLBC or anywhere to gain access to, perhaps, people who are interested in the work who might be willing to relocate here — going outside of this pool of lack of workers, basically.

M. Malenfant: The problem is I don’t think there is a pool or…. I kept asking for a database. “Who can I call? Do you have a list of people that I can call and get a respite person?” “No, no. You just have to go out and find it yourself.” “Can I advertise?” “Oh yeah, I guess you could do that.” “Well, can you help me put an ad together, maybe?” “No, no. You just have to figure that out yourself.”

Exactly. You ask for help, and it feels like you get the door shut in your face every time you turn around. But I keep trying.

N. Simons (Chair): Good for you. You’re conveying the important emotion behind some of the issues that we have to deal with on a technical level, and that’s helpful to us. So I thank you.

Laurie’s got another question.

L. Throness: Do you mind if I ask one more? Are you a special case, or are there other people in your community who are suffering the same problem as you?

M. Malenfant: I do not think that I’m alone. It feels like I’m alone most of the time, but I don’t think I’m alone. No. I know lots of people that keep their kids — I can’t say kids, but their adult children — at home and make due with not getting any help. Most of the time it works really well, except when you have a crisis.

[3:20 p.m.]

A crisis doesn’t have to be major surgery, or anything like that. It can be that you fall down and you break your hand. Things happen, and then things fall apart. Then you have nowhere to go. It would be really nice to…. Right now I would like to put a plan in motion for the next time she does go to the hospital. Who do I call? Where do I get help? I’m meeting shut doors again, and that’s very frustrating. But I want to have that plan in motion because it’s going to happen, more likely, with us than any other. But yeah. I do know a lot of other….

L. Throness: Is there a community of parents who have the same issue? Like, do you meet together, ever?

M. Malenfant: No, we don’t because we’re too busy taking care of our kids. Honestly, we don’t. We sometimes see each other and communicate and have lunch and stuff like that. It’s just because we’ve known each other for a long time, and we still live in town. But no, we’re too busy taking care of our kids. We’re just trying to survive, yes.

R. Leonard: Just one quick question that passed through my head earlier when you were talking. Have you followed any appeal routes? There’s that…. I forget.

N. Simons (Chair): Advocate for Service Quality.

R. Leonard: Thank you. Do you even know of her?

M. Malenfant: No, I don’t.

R. Leonard: Okay. Yeah, that’s what I thought. Thank you.

M. Stilwell (Deputy Chair): We will get you her contact info.

N. Simons (Chair): Monique, thank you very much….

Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot Teresa.

T. Wat: Monique, thank you so much for sharing your personal story with us. As I was listening to you, I just feel so much for you. I’m a mother as well. So to hear your story….

I have a couple of questions that I wanted to ask. Correct me if I’m wrong. You said that your daughter was totally fine before she turned the age of 19. Am I right?

M. Malenfant: No, I didn’t mean that. I meant we were coping fine before she turned 19. But after she turned 19, because of lack of respite or because we lost the support that we were getting before she turned 19, things fell apart.

If we had continued to get the same amount of respite that we had before she turned 19, which was two weekends a month, we would have continued to be fine, I believe. But because she turned 19 and we lost all funding, things fell apart. It didn’t need to fall apart. I mean, I realize that there’s something that needs to happen, but why do things change? The child, the person, hasn’t changed. The needs are the same as before they turned 19 as after they turn 19. So why did we lose all of that? It doesn’t make any sense to me that we did.

T. Wat: I totally understand. You are trying to make the point that it shouldn’t be age-based, that it should be needs-based.

M. Malenfant: It should be need-based.

T. Wat: What I’m trying to get at is before she turned 19, the kinds of services that you received from different ministries — are you happy with those services?

M. Malenfant: I was very happy with the services that we got when she was first diagnosed. I feel that I should have been more appreciative of those services at the time that we got them because when they go to school, it diminishes year by year. And then when they become adults, it disappears completely. So, yeah. I wish I could go back in time and say: “Let’s go back to that.”

The services that we received from the time that she was two, before she was diagnosed, to the time she went to school, were excellent — speech, OT, physio. You don’t get that in the school district. She was in school for 12 years. She never once saw a speech therapist, not once.

T. Wat: So it was in line with what we heard earlier — that once they get to the school, then there’s a lack of resources and support. We hear that loud and clear.

M. Malenfant: Oh, there is a very lack of services in the school district.

T. Wat: Thank you for having a personal confirmation of that.

Another question. I’m sorry that in the last two years, your daughter was diagnosed with cancer.

[3:25 p.m.]

I know there are not enough respite services, people who are qualified. It’s not easy to change it right away. If you get financial support, do you think it will help, even though there are not enough qualified respite professionals to be around helping you? I know you seem to have two problems there — the financial support as well as the respite services.

M. Malenfant: Well, when things get rough is when Katrina gets hospitalized. That’s when I’m trying to put a plan in motion that I can get that extra support when it’s needed. Maybe it is financially at times of need, when she’s hospitalized. But because we’ve now found a respite person, even though it’s costing us extra than we’re getting, we’re making it work, because it is important that we recharge our batteries when we can. So, yeah, we’re making it work. I have asked for extra funding to cover the cost, but so far, I haven’t heard that we’re going to get it.

T. Wat: Thank you for sharing your story. Hopefully, this will lead to some changes.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you, again, for your presence here.

We’re going to continue right on with our next witness, who’s waiting on the phone. We have Nolee Jones.

Welcome to our committee. We’re looking forward to hearing your perspective on the issue that we’re discussing. So go ahead.

NOLEE JONES

N. Jones: My situation is not as unique as it may appear. The difference, I think, would be the potential to a genetic disorder for the family.

My oldest son was diagnosed with attention deficit. My second child was diagnosed with epilepsy. My third child was 11 years later, and he has high symptomology of high-functioning autism. All of those are neurodiverse. Those are all neurodiverse areas.

When you have that kind of scenario coming in through a genetic factor, you get a lot of flack from the doctors, from the teachers, from the people who don’t really know and aren’t educated enough to form those opinions. Then we end up facing more hurdles and more things through the school system that is already fragmented and broken. People like us end up with challenges that are absolutely insane.

I did prepare a letter, and the reason why I’ve been cleared of the accusations or the stigma over the years is because of the loss of my oldest son at the age of 28. When that happened, because they did not have a reason for his death, they began looking into it.

I had been telling them something was wrong, as a parent, for so long, but because I had all three of my children in there, I was classified, unfoundedly, as being a hypochon­driac, which I really resent. That filtered through every aspect our life and damaged anything and everything. It’s not uncommon. As I’ve gone, I’m finding that in the north here, it’s very well known, and it happens all the time.

[3:30 p.m.]

N. Simons (Chair): To clarify, that is children being removed or parents being unable to access the services?

N. Jones: That is one instance, but also, teachers want to decide they know better than the parents, and they are not educated to make or form those opinions. They’re given far too much power. A teacher is not educated in neurodiversity or any of those things to know what the flags are. They’re not educated in that. A special education assistant may be, because of the training behind that and with working with the children. They’re given far too much ability and far too much power, and they abuse it. It is rampant. It’s not just my case.

N. Simons (Chair): Could I ask how it shows up, how it’s manifested? What happens? What do teachers say, and what is the result of what they say?

N. Jones: I will speak for my community only, and I will tell you that I know this is not something that is uncommon. It’s very common in other small communities. You end up with teachers and staff who remain in the school system…. Let’s just give or take the 20 years that I’ve raised all three of my children. They make an opinion, formed and based on what they think. They don’t have access to the doctors’ letters where you’re going through and a doctor is advocating for you and the doctor is leading and guiding you.

In a small community, they go out and betray the laws of doing what a teacher is supposed to do and the professionalism, and they get very good at hiding it. Then they have teamed up. Over 20 years, in our public school, we’ve had them team up, bully other teachers out, bully other principals out. They’ve lost half of their population at the school because of special needs and their refusal to do it. Teachers don’t want to be bothered with it because there’s not enough funding, the funds were cut back, it’s not in their job description, yadda, yadda, yadda….

I’ve had directors of instruction call the school and tell them: “I’ve told you that this is what you’re doing,” and they’ve blatantly refused services to my son. I’ve called the B.C. Ministry of Education, and they told me: “You are being resistant for some reason.” There was no governing office. Despite my going to the district, I got shut down. And I’m not the only one. We’re talking 20 years of this.

N. Simons (Chair): How are your kids now?

N. Jones: Well, I’ve been told that because I was a special education assistant and because I do have a natural knack, my children were fortunate that I was their mom, because I could work with them. But in order for me to do that, I had to not work, as a single mom, and take the jobs that were revolving around their needs. I lived in poverty. I have gone through so much hell that I can’t even touch on everything in ten minutes.

My children. The oldest has passed away because of a suspected seizure disorder. My daughter had a diagnosis of epilepsy. She was blatantly judged. She had to write lines for her epilepsy — using her epilepsy for an excuse. My daughter would be out of commission for 16 hours at a time, and we were trying desperately to get her on the right medication. The teachers just kind of went on with their concept.

All of that started in the schools, and all of it rippled out to everywhere, to all the services that we needed. It was their opinion, followed the entire way down, and we never had an opportunity or an advocate or someone who would become a liaison to try and make this work, to make sure that someone was doing their job, that all of these people weren’t forming opinions based on hearsay.

[3:35 p.m.]

I had a GP that advocated, I’m telling you. His name was Dr. Kawerninski, and he fought tooth and nail for my kids. He got nowhere, because he was a general practitioner.

N. Simons (Chair): Wow. So you’ve faced, pretty much, all the challenges that someone might….

N. Jones: I’ve been through it all.

N. Simons (Chair): Yeah. What’s the most important thing, you think, that we, as legislators, should take back to government to make recommendations? What do you think? If you had to summarize it, what would you put into that category?

N. Jones: I would think that the system is so divided and so disconnected. When you put the responsibility upon a parent who has to fight everything, every hurdle, and has to pick that ball up and make sure that that ball goes to the next section…. When they drop the ball, you’ve got to be the parent that gets in behind them and says: “Pick up that ball and move it to the next department, please.” You have to challenge your doctors, your physicians, your pediatricians and your specialists to listen to you, and then you have to follow up with them to make sure that they’re doing it.

I’ve had a pediatrician phone, on several occasions and behind the scenes, and he told his opinion to the other professionals. So my son didn’t get his full autism assessment, and we were treated like a bag of crap when we went in for the seizure disorder.

I’ll give you two instances. When I went to the pediatrician, I said: “My daughter has epilepsy. She’s diagnosed with it. She’s not getting better. We need to see a specialist.” Why were we not ever sent to a specialist at the beginning, when she was having difficulty? Five years of this, and finally I insisted. I mean, you’re talking about my daughter, out of commission for 16 hours a day.

I finally went in and said: “Look here. We’re going to a specialist. This is ridiculous.” When I do that, I ask for my youngest boy to be tested as well, because he was showing symptomology of her similar symptoms. Autism wasn’t in the picture, at that time. I arrive to the specialist’s, and this woman comes walking down the hallway. She looks at me and my daughter and my son. I don’t know who she is. She blatantly says to me: “Your kid doesn’t have autism. That kid over there does.” It was a kid that was screaming. You don’t think that the doctor phoned and talked to her? I don’t know her from Adam.

N. Simons (Chair): Hey, Nolee, I’ve got two committee members here who have questions.

R. Leonard: I understand you’re from Telkwa, which is a pretty small community and probably doesn’t have a lot of direct services. When we look at the big picture of what needs to be done to improve the system, I’m wondering if you have a sense of whether or not you had any advocates for your situation and where you might have accessed them. Was there an opportunity for you to get access to services outside of Telkwa?

N. Jones: I’m still fighting for services for my son. We really had a hard battle. We even went through a court dispute over the fact that it was considered bad parenting, which ended up being proven wrong. When the ministry got involved, they proved the case to be not accurate at all. Because we had no services in the small community that I live in, which is Stewart — his father lived in Telkwa — we made the decision, in the court, to move the boy to his dad’s home. But Smithers doesn’t have the services either.

Where do we go? That’s my question. Where do I take my kid? Why is it taking the system all this time to actually do what they’re supposed to do? When a parent brings their child in, they should be able to be heard and be put into the system.

[3:40 p.m.]

All of this hearsay…. Teachers aren’t qualified. GPs aren’t qualified. Some pediatricians aren’t qualified. They can give us brief opinions, but until those tests are done, all of that shouldn’t be the swaying, factoring thing, and it is.

N. Simons (Chair): Okay, Nolee. Thank you for that answer.

We have time for one more question.

L. Throness: Thank you, Nolee, for sharing today. I appreciated your difficult story that you’ve…. You’re a very brave person to have gone through what you’ve gone through.

I wanted to ask about solutions. Do you think the solution might lie in more training for teachers and for other professionals that your children happen to encounter in their lives?

N. Jones: I think that there is a mess across the board. I think teachers need to be trained. I also think teachers should never be allowed to stay in one community more than four years. I think, you know…. Well, one community, one school. It gets to the point where, especially in small communities, it becomes quite — not a good thing.

Having different employers and different staff keeps you on your toes rather than same old, same old. I think that, in my case, we need more training for these people. The families need more advocates with the power to investigate and protect families from this kind of abuse of power.

The system’s wait time is far too long. All testing should be done over a correct formula, rather than one person’s opinion, which has been the case in all of my children’s diagnoses.

There have to be some sort of consequences for these professionals who abuse their powers. We need moderators to oversee that these families are being treated properly that are moving through the system, that they’re moving through the system in a timely and fair aspect, that the stigma is battled and that there is funding and finances to help these families, especially in the north because they are the ones who have to financially carry the burden to travel or commute to these services.

Teachers definitely need to have more training. I’ve already mentioned that — the rotating. We need more special education staff for each child. We need more hours for these children. And I’m an aide, so I know what I’m saying. I see it. We need more services in the north.

N. Simons (Chair): Well, I have to say that it’s really helpful for us, as committee members, to hear your story and to hear the strength and the passion that’s in your voice. I wonder…. I know parents who don’t have the same advocacy skills, and it’s really challenging for them, let alone people who know how to speak for themselves. So on behalf of all of the committee members, I’d like to thank you for taking the time to speak to us this afternoon.

N. Jones: You know, no person below a well-trained professional and a full-spectrum team should make any deci­sion on any of these children. It should never be just one person, especially with the neurodiversity. I appreciate that we’ve had our time and whatnot, but we need more governing bodies, and we need more services. We need someone to moderate that these children are getting what they need — and these families.

N. Simons (Chair): Thank you very much.

With that, committee members, I’ll call…. We’ll adjourn.

N. Jones: I would like to ask for you to please send me a copy of what my statement is.

N. Simons (Chair): We’ll follow up with you for sure, Nolee. Thanks very much.

N. Jones: Okay, thank you.

N. Simons (Chair): With that, I move adjournment.

We’re adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 3:44 p.m.