Contact:

Dave Hagerman, Tayside Community Residential and Support Options

613-264-0953 x 102

dhagerman@tayside.ca

The Lack of Residential Options is Reaching a Crisis for Many Families:

 Currently there are many families in the constituency of Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington who are desperate for increased support for their children with intellectual disabilities. In Lanark County alone there are 177 requests for supports on the Pressures and Priorities list. These requests range from the need for a residential placement to enhanced supports for independent living in our communities.  However, the need for residential care in particular is becoming a pressing and critical issue for aging parents and parents of children who are graduating from the school system. In Lanark County 22 families, of the 106 families’ constituency wide, are facing this looming crisis.

* The table below indicates the level of need in the six counties in the Southeast Region along with the cost involved.

These numbers do not tell the whole story. There are many families with aging parents caring for their adult children with intellectual disabilities who are becoming too old and frail to provide this support. There is no place for these adult children to go and families are becoming desperate. We as a society have been taking this care for granted for far, far too long  and soon there will be no one to continue the support . We must do better. We must provide these families with the piece of mind that their adult children will be cared for with the same love and devotion that they have displayed over these many years.

There are families where the children are reaching the age of 21 and no longer qualify for supports from the school system. The adult system does not have the funds to support them. These families have cared for and loved their children with the support of the school system, but when they outgrow this system, the supports are limited. The stress on families is sometimes unbearable and puts extreme tensions on their family life.

These families become even more frustrated when they realize that similar individuals are being funded through initiatives that they do not qualify for. The closure of the Rideau Regional Centre has provided extensive funding for residential care for individuals coming from this facility, but families in the community who have cared for their children for many… many years, at little or no cost to the government, are still left waiting.  Children who have become wards of the Children Aide’s Society (CAS) are provided generous funding as they reach adulthood but those families, who have cared for their children at home, again, at little or no cost to the government, are left waiting and struggling.  It is not a question of eliminating or limiting the opportunities for the individuals coming from the Rideau Regional Centre or the children from the CAS, these efforts should continue and be, if anything expanded. The real question is one of fairness, and not taking the love and commitment of parents for granted.  We need more funding to meet the very pressing needs of the families in the community who have been waiting desperately but patiently for many years. It has come time to address this very urgent funding crisis

In Lanark County there are many agencies that are ready and willing to pick up the challenge but we need the help of the Provincial Government. If we are going to rely on community agencies and families to provide direct care to the most vulnerable in our society, an improved funding structure must be developed. We must put in place a stable long term funding plan that will enable the community agencies and families to address the many inequities in the current system.