Premier vows to help families featured on CTV expose: But what about the rest?

6 Jun/11 0

Premier vows to help families featured on CTV expose: But what about the rest?

But Christy Clark's response only addresses specific cases cited by CTV, so MOMS urges other families denied support to write the Premier seeking similar relief.

After weeks of pressure from families, advocacy groups and opposition MLAs, CTV's "Investigators" confronted Premier Christy Clark on Friday with more undeniable evidence of the plight of families denied critical supports for adults with developmental disabilities, forcing her to finally admit that the crisis facing families and adults who rely on CLBC-funded supports is "not acceptable."

In two reports that led the 6 o'clock news on Friday, CTV's Mi-Jung Lee and Jim Beatty reported that Clark promised action to address the concerns raised by two families via CTV in the past week. One of the families has waited eight years to access services. Watch a replay of the two CTV news reports here (Click on the link "Correspondents on services for the disabled" to watch full details of both stories) .

The reporters suggested that negative media publicity and a possible upcoming election may have been a key consideration in the Premier's decision to back down from her insistence just a day earlier in the BC Legislature that a focus on growing the economy was the better way to help families impacted by CLBC's funding crisis.

The premier did not say whether other families facing waitlists or cuts would also see similar relief.

MOMS, along with other community living advocacy groups, is therefore urging other families who are waitlisted, who have been denied CLBC services or who have had their services cut to immediately contact the Premier to request that she intervene similarly on their behalf.