Child and Community Resources has laid off 19 people in the north region in the wake of the Ontario government's changes to the Ontario Autism Program.
The organization's office is located in Sudbury, and is the central hub for Northern Ontario, and provides services to Kenora, Rainy River, Thunder Bay, Algoma, as well as Sudbury and Manitoulin districts.
Services provided at CCR include Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA) workshops for parents and professionals, diagnostic services, as well as the EarlyON (formerly know as Best Start) service which helps children from newborn to age six prepare for school.
Child and Community Resources was not handed any type of marching orders from the provincial government to make the layoffs, but rather did it out of necessity as their funding model will be changing.
"The province is moving from funding organizations to provide the services to directly funding families," said Sherry Fournier, executive director, Child and Community Resources. "That's something that we had anticipated was coming, but that requires a change in structure in order to deliver services in the new world."
Reductions implemented by CCR were in part due to the fact that they have not yet received confirmation from the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services of what their budget will be for the upcoming year.
"We're trying to position ourselves so that we can provide, to the best of our ability, affordable service options for families," said Fournier.
The bulk of the 19 layoffs made by CCR are here in Sudbury, with 10 positions being cut, including therapists, regional positions including managers and supervisors, and administrative staff. One layoff was made in Kenora, three in Thunder Bay, and five in Algoma.
Fournier explained that steps were taken to ensure that the layoffs did not cause any interruption to services, and no therapists who were currently providing services were laid off.
"This has been such a difficult process," said Fournier. "Our commitment when the changes came, the board of directors made if very clear that we were not to disrupt service. The positions that we had to issue a layoff notice to were not at this time working directly with children."
While the commitment to continued service levels is there, concerns are mounting for parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder about what these layoffs could mean.
"With the announcement that Child and Community Resources will be making layoffs, we remain concerned that families in the north will not be able to have access to the therapies they desperately need," said a news release from the Northern Ontario Autism Alliance. "The loss of jobs is very unfortunate and negatively impacts the community and our thoughts are with those affected by the cuts."
Challenges for CCR in the north is nothing new, according to Fournier, who says that they're doing their best to take things in stride and will continue to direct all of their resources to frontline therapy services.
"In the north we've always had a challenge because of our geography and our population - we're waiting on information from the ministry on what's coming next, we don't have any details about that," said Fournier.
"Our commitment is to make sure families can access services, and our commitment to our therapists was if things change - we have a lot of great people that I think would love to come back to work here - but I think at this time we have enough people to do the work that we have."
The biggest focus for CCR is providing cost-effective services to families, said Fournier, and that no matter what the government's funding model is, CCR's obligation is to adjust their business model accordingly so that families can continue to receive the same level of service.
"We want families to have value for money," said Fournier. "We need to do our due diligence to prepare ourselves for what's to come, although it's been difficult with the reductions, that's what we've done."
