Note to Ontario Opposition Parties: Kids on the spectrum need your help. And you’re failing to provide it.

After yesterday’s autism announcement by the Ontario government, parents are asking a lot of questions, including the most obvious one: “How is the government going to cover 4 times the number of kids using the same pot of money, and not drastically decrease quality of care?”

After the announcement, I gave my initial thoughts. By the end of the day, both the Liberals and NDP each issued press releases in response to the government’s proposal. The Liberal response was infuriating, whereas the NDP one was simply pointless. Let’s review.

First, the Liberal response, penned by current MPP and former cabinet minister Michael Coteau:

Coteau echoes the concerns of many parents here. But instead of promoting reforms to a broken system, he gives us this:

The changes I introduced 2 years ago provided choice, consistency and confidence by offering options for evidence-based behavioural services.

My responses:

• Are you kidding me?!?
• Kids have been giving the “choice” to rot on waiting lists. My son is about to turn 4, and has been on waiting lists for half of his life, with no signs that help will ever arrive.
• Moms are told by health-care providers that they have to make a “choice” — quit their jobs and become full-time therapists for their kids. Not that Dads are rarely, if ever told this. The “system” is so unbelievably structurally sexist, it isn’t funny.

So absolutely no suggestions on how to improve outcomes for kids on the spectrum, just a defense of a failed policy.

Let’s move on to the NDP. Before we do, I’d like to introduce you to something I’ve instituted with the policy team at SPI, called “The Converse Rule”

The Converse Rule: Any policy recommendation where the converse of that recommendation isn’t also a potentially sensible recommendation, isn’t a useful recommendation and should not be treated as such.

Example of a violation of the converse rule: “The education system should consider the needs of children when designing curricula.” Is there any reason why the education system wouldn’t do this? Would “The education system should ignore the needs of children when designing curricula” make sense as a recommendation? No. So the converse rule suggests this isn’t a real recommendation.

Example where the converse rule works: “The government should make ‘larger bets’ by giving larger innovation grants to fewer firms.” The converse of this would be: “The government should make a greater number of ‘smaller bets’ by spreading innovation spending across a larger number of companies.” Both of these are plausible suggestions (in fact, the Federal government over the last 40 years has gone from one to the other).

Example where the converse rule helps strengthen recommendations: “The amount of STEM taught in elementary schools should increase”. Okay, but is there any reason why it should decrease? I mean, sure, if you thought STEM was actively harmful, that’d be one reason. Another would be that if you thought other topics were more valuable. But if so, you’d probably point that out. As such “The amount of STEM taught in elementary schools should increase, with a reduced emphasis on social sciences” or “The amount of STEM taught in elementary schools should increase and the school day should be made longer” are much more useful recommendations, as their converses are more plausible. (Note: I didn’t say these were good recommendations. I am a social scientist, after all).

The NDP release is here. The final paragraph contains their recommendations:

“Families deserve so much better than to be shuffled from a bad Liberal plan to an even worse Conservative one,” said Taylor. “We need to eliminate wait lists by investing more into autism services, focusing on evidence based solutions that put the needs of kids and their families first — not just redistributing a funding envelope that’s too small to solve the problem. New Democrats will keep fighting for a comprehensive autism strategy that focuses on a child’s need, not just their age, so that the services they need are there for them, regardless of age.”

Let’s break this down, using the converse rule:

• “We need to eliminate wait lists by investing more into autism services”, which is followed up by “not just redistributing a funding envelope that’s too small to solve the problem.” This is a vague recommendation, but it is a recommendation. It’d be helpful to have some details (how much money? where is it going to come from?) But this counts.
• “focusing on evidence based solutions”. Would you ever not focus on evidence based solutions? Doesn’t do well under the converse rule.
• “put the needs of kids and their families first”. Again, doesn’t do well under the converse rule.
• “ a comprehensive autism strategy”. Would anyone argue for a non-comprehensive strategy?
• “focuses on a child’s need, not just their age”. This does count as a recommendation, since the current proposal is based around age.

This is pretty weak sauce, but there’s at least something here. Let’s hope the NDP turn this into concrete suggestions. Our kids deserve it.

Overall, the autism-treatment-for-kids issue is going to be a bear of a problem to solve. Either governments need to drastically reduce the cost of treatment (while maintaining quality) or drastically increase budgets (and I mean drastically — 5x or 10x. Of course, then the bottleneck would be in finding the workers to provide the services). I don’t see any party anywhere proposing anything that would fully address the cost or budget issue. Then there’s the issue that we don’t really have a good idea of what treatments work and how well. I get asked all the time if Mats’ private therapy is working. Personally, I think it’s doing wonders and he’s making a ton of progress (which is why we keep spending so much time and money on it), but I also have no real idea about the counterfactual: How much progress would he have made without therapy? There’s no way I’ll ever know.