Background

There has been constant and often intense pressure to close professionally-staffed group homes for adults with developmental disabilities and reduce the role of unionized care arrangements since the BC Liberals took office in 2001. 

There are good reasons to offer alternatives, as group homes are not right for everyone. But for government at least, the primary motivation all along has been about reducing spending. A major shift from group homes towards more informal and affordable adult care arrangements was to be a key component of the community living restructuring that led to CLBC. At the outset, BC Liberal insider/CLBC architect Doug Walls promised that this and other proposed reforms would reduce community living costs by 20%.  But community push-back against efforts to close group homes to produce the bulk of the promised savings has led to a constant battle since that time.

In 2006, when CLBC was under the Ministry for Children and Families, the Minister ordered a $2 million survey called the Residential Options project, which required CLBC to interview every single one of its almost 3,000 group home residents to see if they'd consider moving to a less formal arrangement. The answer was an overwhelming No! - despite repeated government assurances that this was about offering more choices, not about saving money.

There was a lot of angst while the review was under way - see Public Eye Online Feb. 07  - but the exercise fizzled after the report came out in June 07 confirming that residents very definitely wanted to stay put and would not voluntarily give up their homes.

The next attempt was an external review of CLBC commissioned by the Province in 2008. The resulting Queenswood report quite frankly addressed the province's and CLBC's rationale for wanting to close goup homes (i.e. that it was indeed all about cutting costs) and the challenges to doing this. The report concluded that since you could not force people to move, CLBC was focussing its energies instead on directing all incoming clients to the new, less-costly "home sharing" arrangements and waiting for the current group home residents to die off. 

Read the section starting on P. 95 of the Queenswood report (PDF page numbering P 109).

The report accepts - with no evidence - that home sharing is just as safe and appropriate for any adult with developmental disabilities as group home care, but for far less cost. That's certainly not the case in different jurisdictions, where costs in these and other settings are roughly similar for people with similar needs. 

Such a conclusion could only come from comparing costs of serving low-needs individuals in home sharing against those for group home residents who require intensive support. Comparative savings might also result from a serious gap in standards and oversight for the less formal models. For someone with severe challenges who needs 24/7 monitoring to go from a residential arrangement that costs $100K to one that costs $29K a year requires extensive reductions in the level of care and support.

Part of the reason people are extremely reluctant to move from group homes is the lack of quality control, oversight and independent evaluation of these new informal care models that are being promoted. Some work well but there are also worrying anectodes about home care contractors collecting their payment and keeping the roommate in the basement. Such situations are inherently less stable and therefore unsuitable for individuals who cannot cope with stress and change. The other issue is that as people age, they will need more intense care. And those who give up their group homes know they will never get back in.

The latest push began this year, as CLBC sought to find some $22 million in "savings" to offset a budgetary squeeze downloaded from the Province.

The push to move people out of group homes is not the only impact. Staffing cuts have resulted in reports of group home residents being "locked down" for the evening once day-shift staff leave, eliminating any opportunity for getting out in the community or socializing and making a mockery of the very concept of "community living."

Here's the first report from the Times Colonist's Lindsay Kines breaking the story:

Victoria Times Colonist: Cuts could close group homes

Advocates say government agency hopes to save $22 million this year

Lindsay Kines, Times Colonist

June 6, 2010

Agencies and group home residents are complaining about strong-arm bully tactics by CLBC, as developmentally disabled adults are forced out of their homes, and with officials then lying to the public to cover up what's happening.

Here is a link to a U-Tube video: Save Our Group Homes

And some recent news coverage:

Victoria Times Colonist:  BC government agency accused of duping public about group homes

By Lindsay Kines, Times Colonist

June 25, 2010

Catching up on a very interesting debate...

To answer the original question about private/independent education (the distinction being really just branding because independent schools are becoming less so as they accept more govt funding and consider unionization, etc), I think we need to consider what is the whole point of having public schools in the first place.

If our forefathers thought the most important features of education were choice, flexibility and competition, they'd have chosen the competitive, elitist British model, as the US did. They didn't. They very consciously chose a different way - one that was intended to give each Canadian child an equal opportunity to achieve their unique individual potential, regardless of the circumstances of birth.

Ryerson's vision

In Upper and Lower Canada, where this started as essentially a public Protestant school system, the power of the Catholic Church assured them of control over the souls of their own parishioners' children - so Catholic boards also got government funding (and in most provinces are still the only other schools that do get tax dollars). Children with special needs were not considered capable of being educated so they were left out. Other than that, all Canadians went to school in a free, universal system that offered a level playing field - giving every child an equitable (not equal) opportunity to succeed in life.

So for generations, Canadian children have been able to get a free and inclusive education together at their local comprehensive school, assured that they were getting essentially the same access, regardless of whether their parents were wealthy or dirt poor, or what neighbourhood they lived in, and with the only choice being between Protestant or Catholic public schools, in provinces where the Catholics had enough influence to secure funding. The super wealthy were always free to pay for their own private schools if they wanted to, but very few did so.

It's a system that served Canada remarkably well for generations, creating a highly productive economy, cohesive communities and a highly stable society with very few pockets of real poverty, making us the envy of the world (except First Nations, who had the whole residential school nightmare imposed on them, and kids with invisible disabilities, who were ignored and encouraged to quit early). 

Today, most children in BC can still attend some of the world's top schools for free, and receive a wider array of choices in education, all fully funded by the state, than ever before. There is no question our public education system has produced a more fair, successful and informed society than most.

Inclusion - in theory

Several decades ago, growing awareness of human rights prompted the realization that even children with profound disabilities should have the same rights, and the move to inclusion began - at least in theory.

What we face today is a move to inclusion that was never funded - just as community living was never funded - because they both occured at a point in history where Canadians, like everyone else, came to widely believe in the ideology of deregulation, smaller government and tax cuts as the way to stimulate a rising tide of prosperity that would supposedly lift us all ever higher. Today the BC government provides less than half of what it costs for schools - public or independent - to provide the additional services that children with special needs require (and that gap is one that has grown enormously in just 10 years). Public schools can't charge fees so they can't make up the shortfalls.

Most local boards have heavily subsidized special ed in the public schools to try to mitigate this shortfall. All together, they spend about $300 million more a year on special ed than the province provides in special ed grants. But with growing structural budget deficits since the late 1990s, those subsidies have been stretched increasingly thin. This year, even districts like Richmond are warning they can no longer afford inclusion.

Accountability gap

This slide has been hastened because the provincial accountability framework has an enormous (and growing) gap with respect to serving children with special needs. The Ministry no longer tracks outcomes for many children with special needs; it no longer monitors inputs either. Bill 33 selectively protects mainstream services at the expense of things like special ed. And the Ministry provides no effective appeal or complaints mechanism to allow parents to hold local boards, schools or teachers accountable. So service levels inevitably continue to slide. 

And it is not just the public schools that are failing our kids. Many independent schools won't even accept them. Many religious schools are guilty of the same failures that we see in the public schools, or worse. This failure is not unique to union vs non-union, religious vs secular or public vs private. The common factor is the overlap of the funding/cost gap and the accountability gap.  

Pockets of success remain in public schools and many children continue to survive or even to thrive (mine being one example). But there is no question that our public schools are increasingly failing children with special needs (and all the other vulnerable children who require extra attention). Those who can afford to are turning to private rescue schools or tutoring services. While this may be a good solution in communities like the North Shore or Vancouver, where there are lots of private options and lots of people who can afford them, it is a solution that leaves most British Columbian children with special needs out in the cold. In other words - it's a solution that directly contradicts the original mandate of public education.

Privatize private schools?

So why are people suddenly pointing fingers at independent schools? Since 2001, the BC Liberals have been quietly but gradually increasing funding levels for independent schools, even as they have failed to fully fund a series of new funding pressures on the public schools. BC's Catholic schools had complained for years because they got very little funding compared to those in Ontario, for example. They joined forces with other private schools, rebranded themselves as independent schools and lobbied very effectively based on the (largely unproven) claim that more funding for their schools would help keep down overall education costs.

Most British Columbians had no idea their tax dollars had been subsidizing private and religious schools for decades - so many have been surprised by recent news stories revealing this. Most provinces don't fund private schools like BC does, apart from the Catholic boards. And polls consistently show that most Canadians don't support public funding of private/independent or religious schools, which is why the BC government hasn't advertised this funding shift.

Private, religious and independent schools always have been and always will be there - that's not the pivotal point in question. And how much funding they should or should not receive is a difficult question that society will always wrestle with, although the prevailing societal view is clearly that the pendulum has swung too far.

Two-tiered access

But neither of these are the key question that we should be asking, IMHO. The key question is why are children with special needs being forced to pay privately to get the education to which they are entitled? Why is BC creating a 2-tier system for one "class" of students by denying them full access to a public education? I'm no lawyer, but if children with special needs as a category are disproportionately being denied access to appropriate educational services in BC's public system (and most of us would anecdotally agree that's what's happening), I think we have the makings of a massive discrimination suit against the government if families ever decided to pursue that.

This brings us to the final question of whether it's realistic to think that government can afford special education - a question that genuinely troubles many, even those who are parents of kids with special needs. I don't think we will ever afford the kind of system that will make everyone 100% happy (and as one commenter noted, a reasonable degree of challenge is a healthy part of the whole experience of growing up).

But when we look at the obscene amounts of public dollars spent on other "priorities" there is no question that special education is affordable - especially when we look at the longer terms costs of failing to do so.

Impossible dream?

And in the current context, it is fair to ask whether, instead of investing more in private solutions that will only ever benefit a few, and that will always be inherently inequitable, we are not better off focussing our energies on forcing government to invest in rebuilding the universal system and implementing a full accountability framework that will ensure that every child, regardless of need, has access to a fully-funded public education that meets their individual needs. And one with functional appeal/complaints systems that empower parents to resolve legitimate failures (bullying, denial of service, lack of appropriate expertise etc) 

That is only an impossible dream if we give up and turn our backs on public education. Thankfully the original founders of Canada's public system had more vision and confidence than that (because they certainly didn't have more money or clout than we do!) and I see absolutely no reason why we should settle today for anything less.

The Tyee Online

Poll shows support for increasing early childhood spending

Tom Sandborn

April 28, 2010

More than 70 per cent of B.C. residents underestimate how many of the province's children enter school developmentally vulnerable, an Angus Reid poll released today shows.

And most of those polled expressed strong support for increased public spending once they learned how many B.C. children are at risk and how low Canadian investment in early childhood education and daycare is in contrast to other wealthy countries. Read more

Here are some links to information on education and special education cuts:

• Vancouver Parents for Successful inclusion: letter to minister warning that provincial framework forces districts to concentrate cuts in areas like Special Ed to offset provincial funding shortfalls. Read the letter 
• Vancouver Special Education Advisory Committee documents loss of special education teachers despite a 35% increase in students with special needs, warns further cuts planned for Vancouver will present safety risks and deny access. Read the brief and district stats 
• BC Education Coalition/Stop BC Education Cuts: Provincial website and Facebook group gathering information about cuts and various initiatives to fight them.  The site includes a section devoted to special education news and impacts

Cutting social services won't pay benefits

Slashing government programs will push up health-care costs

By Jennifer Charlesworth, Special to Times Colonist

February 17, 2010

An economist with one of Canada's big banks commented to media last month that health-care spending is the budgetary equivalent of Pac-Man, "eating everything else in people's budgets."

In B.C., health-care spending has risen almost 50 per cent in the last eight years and accounts for more than 40 per cent of all provincial expenditures. In Canada, the $128 billion a year spent on health care consumes 12 per cent of the national GDP.

Is that simply the price we have to pay for good health?

In a word, no. For many years, researchers have studied the factors in a person's life that determine good health. They concluded long ago that a good health-care system is by no means the only requirement -- in fact, it's just a quarter of the story. Read more

Despite promises to protect the budgets for special needs, senior Ministry staff have confirmed that unfunded new costs and rising demands will further strain existing services. On top of this, the Ministry is in the midst of another major restructuring, which includes integrating special needs services with other children's services in a new regional management framework.

MOMS was invited to a meeting on February 15 for an update on Ministry plans and challenges. Our unofficial report on the discussion can be found here.  We will continue to share any further information or updates as they reach us and welcome first-hand reports from families about how the restructuring and budget challenges may be affecting them personally.

The Association calls for significant increases to the current autism funding levels for preschoolers, for funding to be tied to individual need, and for restoration of the direct funding option for families. It also strongly condemned the lack of consultation over the controversial changes announced by Children's Minister Mary Polak last fall. 

"Many people in the Autism community were shocked and disturbed by the closure of all of the EIBI programs and the funding structure changes," the BC ABA statement reads. "...Furthermore, discussions with stakeholders might have resulted in a more sound decision on how to achieve province-wide, equitable access to services for individuals with ASD."

The BC ABA joins parents, advocacy groups and other professionals who have universally panned the province's abrupt autism policy changes, stating that the new provincial funding formula for preschoolers with autism "is not sufficient to purchase intensive behavioural therapy at the level (25-40 hours per week) which research has shown to be effective."  The Association cites the example of other Canadian provinces that fully fund the costs of early intervention, noting that "given the discrepancy between provincial funding and the actual costs of implementing an intensive ABA program, few children in British Columbia will likely receive the intensity of treatment that has been empirically shown to improve the core characteristics of Autism." (Emphasis added)

The statement also criticizes the elimination of the direct funding option for families, which means that all families must now submit invoices for often lengthy government approval and payment instead of being able to directly pay the private therapists who provide early intervention services for their children.  The BC ABA warns that a critical obstacle for many families is being able to find and retain qualified therapists and that delaying payment in this mannner will only exacerbate this problem.

The statement urges the provincial government to increase funding per child to between $40,000 and $70,000 [i.e. approximately what government was formerly paying for the now cancelled EIBI programs which the Minister portrayed as wasteful] and to fund each child based on individual need.

The BC ABA recommendations support those that have been presented by parents, advocacy groups and international autism experts in numerous meetings and communications with Children's Minister Mary Polak and Premier Gordon Campbell, all of which have been ignored to date. Polak and Campbell now stand entirely alone, with no one left who has not denounced their unilateral actions that deny hope to BC's children with autism and their families.

UPDATE: Times Colonist reports on Victoria parents' Feb 1 protest plans

 Surrey: Last week, Surrey DPAC warned that some $18-20 million in downloaded/unfunded provincial costs will result in program cuts that directly harm students. (Press release attached)

Victoria: Victoria trustees told the Times Colonist yesterday they would have to consider cutting the district's Special Education program to balance their budget.

Vancouver: Last week, Vancouver served notice that up to 800 teachers could be laid off to address a provincial funding shortfall ranging from $17 to $35 million, depending on what the province decides to fund in the upcoming provincial budget. And at a meeting for parents of students with special needs this week, the Board Chair acknowledged that special education was particularly vulnerable to cuts, since staff costs are protected via contracts and class size is now protected by legislation, leaving unprotected services like special education as one of the few areas they can cut.

Virtually every school board in the province is confronting similar choices, given the limited number of unprotected programs, like special ed, that they can cut to make up for unfunded provincial costs, since all boards are required by law to balance their budgets regardless of provincial funding shortfalls. Accentuating the looming threat to special education is that the province only funds half or less of what districts actually spend on special ed - a subsidy that is hard for trustees to defend when schools are being closed and core programs slashed.

At the core of this unprecedented crisis is the growing number of downloaded costs that the province has so far refused to cover in provincial education funding grants. These include further increases for teacher salaries and benefits under contracts that the province negotiated, new provincial carbon tax and carbon offset charges, increases to provincial MSP and WCP premiums, implementation costs of new provincial requirements like Bill 33 and full-day kindergarten, and general inflation, which the provincial funding formula also does not cover.

The provincial government will present its budget for 2010-11 in early March and has to date refused to consider new funding to cover these new costs, leaving districts projecting the largest deficits seen in a decade, and cuts that will seriously impact students.

Vulnerable kids unfairly targeted

Provincial officials are justifying the cuts by stating that districts have to tighten their belts like anyone else. This response fails to acknowledge that districts cannot force most district services to tighten their belts because they are protected by provincially-negotiated contracts and requirements. Staff will not sacrifice pay or benefits and boards must also find a way to cover new pay and benefit increases negotiated by the province. Along with provincial requirements governing a host of activities, from class size to reporting and administrative roles, this means districts actually have very few options or "discretionary" spending that can be cut when they are told to tighten their belts. 

In effect, school board "belt tightening" amounts to downloading a provincial budgetary crisis onto the most vulnerable students in our public schools - students with special needs, ESL and Aboriginal students and those who need additional programs and supports to succeed. In failing to provide any policy to protect these programs and students while protecting everything from teacher pensions to teacher-student ratios in law, the province has created an uneven playing field that forces school boards to unfairly penalize their most vulnerable students whenever cuts must be made. 

ADVOCACY: What you can do

The harsh reality facing our kids is just emerging and there is very little time to act. Parents and advocacy groups representing students with special needs and other vulnerable groups need to act immediately, by telling their MLAs, Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid, Finance Minister Colin Hansen and Premier Gordon Campell that it is not acceptable to target BC's most vulnerable students to solve a problem they had no hand in creating.   

1. We need to convince government to cover all education costs in the 2010-11 budget before it is presented on March 3.

2. Strength in numbers. We can be most effective if we join with broader groups of parents, PACs and public education advocacy groups to demand that the province fully fund all provincially-mandated costs, including special education - instead of fighting each other for shares of an inadequate budget and ignoring the roots of the problem. 

- Contact your PAC and DPAC and encourage them to write the Premier, FInance Minister, Education Minister and your local MLAs - just as Surrey DPAC has done.

- Join our growing Facebook group "Stop BC Education Cuts" to find out what other parents and districts are doing, to find and share information about cuts and to connect with other parents or advocacy efforts in your community.