BC Services Hub for Children With Special Needs

Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash

In late October 2021, the MCFD announced a new provincial model for accessing support for children with special developmental needs. The new system will roll out over the next three years.

The expressed hope by the Ministry is that the new model, which will involve the creation of regional treatment hubs, will increase access to provision of services by 28% for families across the province, over the current model, which can take up to two years for a confirmed diagnosis in order to begin to receive specialized treatment.

The first two hubs, which will be operated through health districts, are scheduled to open in the province’s northwest and in the Central Okanagan region in 2023. Mitzi Dean, the provincial MCFD Minister, announced that these two locations had been chosen to offer an opportunity to test out the new model in both a rural and an urban setting. The plan is to have hubs available throughout the province.

Families who now have funding through the current system are able to stay with the current model until 2025 when the new system should be fully operational.

The Minister explained the rationale for the change by stating, “In today’s system, if you’re a parent of a child and you start noticing they’re not meeting their milestones, you’re worried about them, you think maybe their speech isn’t doing so well, it’s really difficult to know where to turn. If you think that they have symptoms of, say, for example, autism, then you need to go and get a diagnosis before you’re able to access funding. And that diagnosis can take up to two years.” Under the new system, parents could take their child to the hub and begin to receive specialized assistance right away.

Reactions to the report have been mixed. Parents like Zev Tiefenbach from Salmon Arm, interviewed in a November 2nd CTV report, whose son has Down syndrome and other complex needs, are hoping that the creation of treatment hubs will enable access to the range of critical services that have been hard to access under the current system. However, parents whose children already have an autism diagnosis and are receiving individualized support through the current system ($22,000 per year in funding supports for approved resources for children under 6/$6,000 per year for children six and over), and who have been able to set up long-term connections with a team of specialists for their child’s treatment, are concerned about being able to maintain those established relationships under the new system.

The province has estimated that the new format will be able to help around 8,300 more children than are currently being served under the existing scheme.

Autism B.C. and Down Syndrome B.C., advocacy groups for families of children with these two conditions, both expressed concern that they felt they had not been given enough direct consultation on the changes prior to enactment on details of the logistics for roll-out of the new hubs and specifics of how the hubs will operate. Kaye Banez, president of the board of directors of Autism BC, told CTV that, while her group had a half-hour conversation with Minister Dean in the days running up to the announcement, they did not have clarity on how families would be able to obtain direct access to services or how needs assessments would be processed, and feel a need for more opportunity for direct consultation.

Minister Dean, quoted in a Victoria News article on October 27th, said that children with autism and their families will receive the same level of support through the new hub system and promised that the province would communicate any changes in advance to make sure families are supported through the transition.

The Victoria News article interviewed Jennifer Charlesworth, BC representative for children and youth, about the announcement, who called for expanding care for thousands of children on the autism spectrum to get increased services as the hub system is rolled out. She noted that the hub model is intended to provide a more coordinated approach for respite services for families, and wondered whether it might be possible to prioritize availability of this aspect to help families through this period of transition to the new system. She said, “I’m optimistic about the long-range plan. I think they are moving in the right direction. What I’m anxious about is what’s happening for the families who are struggling right now…”