Guest guest Posted May 18, 2001 Report Share Posted May 18, 2001 Hotmail Folder: Inbox Home Hotmail Search Shopping People & Chat Hotmail® agencyinjustice@... Inbox Compose Address Book Folders Options Messenger Calendar Help Folder: Inbox Save Address - Block Sender To: kmarlowe@..., agencyinjustice@... Save Address Subject: Article from the globeandmail.com Web Centre Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 20:18 -0400 Reply Reply All Forward Delete Previous Next Close mark (mmarlowe@...) thought you would be interested in this article from http://www.globeandmail.com Subscribe to The Globe and Mail NOW and get three months for the price of two! Subscribe online! https://secure.theglobeandmail.com/gam/services/circulation/subscriptionD.html Message: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------\ --------------------------- The Globe and Mail, Thursday, May 10, 2001 Shame on Ontario for abandoning these children By Margaret Wente When andre was eight years old, Ann Larcade realized she couldn't care for him on her own for much longer. That was 2½ years ago. He is neurologically impaired. He can't feel heat or cold, and is impervious to pain. He can speak and even read a bit, and he is a kind and loving little boy. But he had started slipping back, regressing mentally. He had terrible rage attacks. She couldn't find a place for him. " No one would take him, " she recalls. " Two different social workers told me I should take him to the hospital emergency room, and leave him there alone with a note. " She didn't do it. But dozens of families have signed away custody of their disabled children in order to get them cared for. Many others have given up their jobs and spent all their savings to try to keep their kids at home. Ann Larcade, who's the general manager of a large resort in Muskoka, is speaking up for all of them. She is heading a $500-million class-action lawsuit against the Province of Ontario to win back the help their children are legally entitled to. " It's really not about the money, " she told me. " We want the government to talk to us. " Yesterday's budget pledged more money for the disabled, and it's welcome. But it's earmarked for other things. These kids need intensive home support or long-term residential placement. Right now they're getting neither. Mike , the Premier, has a special-needs child himself. He has told Ms. Larcade he understands and wants to help. But since 1997, these kids have been caught in a bureaucratic limbo that has grown worse and worse. The government downloaded the responsibility for special-needs kids onto local agencies, but not the money to provide for them. " When you call any organization that deals with special needs, they say 'we can't help you,' " says Ms. Larcade. Everyone is theoretically committed to keeping the disabled out of institutions and in the community, if possible with their families. But theoretical commitment is cheap. Every type of support service parents need is severely rationed, short-term, and subject to renegotiation. Ms. Larcade is used to fighting for her son. He's 11 now. Finally, last fall, she found a good group home for in Guelph, Ont., a seven-hour drive from her home in Huntsville. But there was an awful price: In order to get him in, she'd have to give him up. " Everyone I talked to said there was no way out, " she says. " They told me in order to keep services for him I would have to sign over full wardship to the Crown. " She would have no say in where he lived, or what treatment he'd receive, or how he might spend the rest of his foreshortened life. " If my child had cancer, I wouldn't have to go through this. " She was at the end of the road. Then she read about the tis. Elena and Marco ti are the parents of 2-year-old Luca, a severely disabled child who needs round-the-clock care. They too were told by the province that they'd have to give him up in order to get long-term care for him. Rather than give in, they went public. The image of a heartless government snatching disabled children from their loving, desperate parents is, to say the least, bad press. So the province settled fast. It agreed to pay for Luca's care as long as required, no strings attached. Ann Larcade demanded, and got, the same deal. But there are thousands of other parents without her resources. That's why she agreed to head the class-action suit. She's fighting for them now. There's Barbara , a single mother with a teenaged son named Blake. She used to have a special-needs agreement administered through her local children's aid society. It was enough for her to keep him home until he's a little older. Then she moved, and the funding rules changed, and she was stuck. She had to give him up. Now another CAS has custody, and it won't give him back. Because she can't get access to services on her own, it argues that he's a child in need of protection -- even if there is no issue of neglect or abuse. There's Clough, a single mother who cares for her eight-year-old son 24 hours a day. She's a capable parent with high earning potential, but she's on welfare. Either that, or give him up. There's Leonard Nieberg, a single father with sole custody of two disabled boys. He used to earn $50,000 a year as a construction foreman. He ran out of money and now he's on welfare too. He wants some in-home support, and a school placement, and assistance on weekends for his sons. He's in negotiations now. The toll on families with disabled children is always very high. Most marriages, including Ann's, don't survive the strain. " Nobody can possibly understand the day-to-day demands unless they're in it, " she says. All she wants is for the government to stop making it worse. mwente@... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------\ --------------------------- Visit globeandmail.com for more breaking news and powerful financial tools. 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