For Immediate Release
Tayside Community Residential and Support Options, in partnership with Randy Hillier, will be co-sponsoring the
following public Forum:

Minding the care of those with Intellectual Disabilities

At The Beckwith Community Hall
1702 Ninth Line (near Hwy 15)
March 11, 2008
10:00 AM to 12:30 PM
Many individuals in Lanark County who have been waiting patiently, but in quiet desperation for services to meet the needs of their family members who have intellectual disabilities, will attend this forum in an effort to raise public
awareness of the serious nature of this lack of service.

There is the 82 year old mother who has not spent a night away from her down syndrome son for 39 years. “There seems to be no place for him to go once I am gone” she says.
There is the single parent with a 21 year old child with multiple disabilities who has been denied full time employment at a rural post office because she could not find in-home support care for her son, partially due to bureaucratic turf
issues. Her daughter quit high school to support her disabled brother. The family continues to live in poverty….tucked away in rural Ontario; another family forgotten and taken for granted.

There are the parents raising two disabled children, one with severe autism the other asperger syndrome, and now that they are reaching 18 and 21, they leave the children’s system and enter the adult system, where the answers from the
government is always the same, “there is no money…sorry you are going to have to wait”. Meanwhile, her family has already broken down once due to the stress of the care and she is trying to rebuild her family again with a new partner. “I am just losing hope…there just does not seem to be any hope” she said.There are over 625 individuals with intellectual disabilities with unmet needs in the counties of Lanark, Frontenac Lennox-Addington, Leeds Grenville and Hastings Prince Edward. This is a crisis of care. These families are living in quiet desperation, but it is time the Provincial Government made a real commitment so our communities can say Our Ontario really does include families with members who have intellectual disabilities.
For more information please contact:
Dave Hagerman
Tayside Community Residential and Support Options
Perth, Ontario
613-264-0953 x 102
dhagerman@tayside.ca
Web site: tayside.ca
Attached Consolidated Waiting list for services to people with intellectual disabilities MCSS,
January 25, 2008