It was a morning full of emotion, as children attended the last day of the autism program at the Starbright Children’s Development Centre in Kelowna on Friday.
“Leaving this program behind, it’s heartbreaking,” said Theresa Bishop, whose five-year-old son, Odin, attended the program. “He’s made so much progress with this program; he’s on a roll.”
Last month, Starbright announced that after running the program for 10 years it had no choice but to terminate it.
“It’s having to make the worst decision because you have to, not because you want to,” said Rhonda Nelson, Starbright’s executive director.
The program is funded through a system called fee-for-service.
“We invoice the ministry for the services we provide,” Nelson said. “The difficulty for us as an agency is the funds that the parents receive have not changed in a quite a long time.”
Nelson said the funding levels were set in 2010 and are simply not enough to sustain the program.
Starbright has, for some time now, been making up the shortfall through donations, but Nelson said they’re not consistent or enough to keep the program going.
“The donors in this community are remarkable, but the gap gets too big and we just can’t support it anymore,” Nelson said.
Global News contacted the Ministry of Children and Family Development on Wednesday to get more information about the funding model and ask if the province would consider changing it. But in an email response, a ministry spokesperson said the minister would not be available for an interview.
The ministry did, however, re-iterate that individual agencies like Starbright are the ones responsible for managing their own costs.
“If there were different models for how the services were delivered, potentially that would help,” Nelson said.
On Friday, many parents shared stories of the life-changing impact the program has had on their children, including Nadine Close, whose three-year-old daughter, Madelyn, was non verbal.
“When she first came here, she didn’t have any words. And the first day she came here, she came home and said hello,” said Close “Now she can say so many things; you can almost have a conversation with her now.”
Parents of the roughly 40 children affected by the cut have been left scrambling to find other early intervention options.
“I have to find him another program, so we will be dealing with that in the new year,” said Allie Aarsen, who son Sterling, 4, has been attending the program for the past year and a half.
While there are options out there, parents said none mirror the comprehensive service offered at Starbright.
“Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of places that offer interaction with other kids, which is important because if you’re going to go to school, you need to have all the things they teach here,” Close said.
Things like communication, mobility and social interaction.
“(Odin) has only been in the program four months and before that. He was non-verbal and now he’s verbal,” Bishop said. “They do magic in there, whatever they do.”
In the e-mail to Global News, the ministry also said parents affected by the program closure can contact Autism Information Services B.C. (toll free 1 844 878-4700) to find out about alternative service options for their child.
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