Parents simply unable to care for autistic son, drop him off at gov’t office

OTTAWA — Finally at her breaking point, Amanda Telford took her son Tuesday morning and dropped him off at an Ontario government office. She and her husband, she said, could not care for him any longer.

For 19 years, the Telfords have been supervising their severely autistic, non-verbal son, Philippe, guarding him against what is for him an always dangerous world. He is a wanderer: the police have gone looking for him more times than she can count. Inside the house, too, little is safe. Because of his diabetes, even a loaf of bread on the kitchen counter is a hazard.

On Saturday, he left the house and walked four kilometres, across busy streets, and ended up at a restaurant. Two days later, he found some pills in the house, although they were not easy to get at, and swallowed 14 of them. Later that day, after they got him home from the hospital, he slipped out of the house again and into the house of strangers a few blocks away. It was a house in which three women live, and Philippe is, by now, six feet tall and weighs 215 pounds. Telford says, however, that the women were able to understand the situation and were kind about it.

Yet she says the recent string of events was the end of the line for her and her husband, Alex.

“I also have medical issues where I’m no longer able to deal with the stress that is associated with caring for him,” or to maintain the required energy level, Telford said Tuesday night. “My husband is in the same boat.”

The deciding factor, she said, was her son’s safety.

“The bottom line is that my husband and I were no longer able to keep him safe.”

For years, the Telfords, like many families caring for disabled children, have struggled to get enough help, in the form of respite care or funding for personal workers to spend time with their son. She said it’s always a losing fight.

So they made what she called a “gut-wrenching” decision to drop him off at the Developmental Services Ontario office on Montreal Road.

Telford said the DSO called the police, who came to the Telfords’ home. Telford said the police are not investigating the case any further. She said Philippe is now in a crisis bed in South Ottawa and she hopes that he will get into a group home.

Francine Groulx, with the DSO office where Philippe was dropped off, told CTV Ottawa in an email: “We are dealing with the situation today, making sure that there is a safe solution for the short term for both the young man and his family.”