Toronto Star – Mom Fights for School Supports for Son

[Patte Rosebank]

http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/familyhealth/children%27shealth/article/816994–mom-fights-for-school-supports-for-son

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[Anonymous]

Oh dear God, for the love of all that is good in this world I hope the mother wins. I also hope this has an impact that reaches outside of Ontario classrooms. I know that we need this disorder to be recognised for the impact that it has in Alberta as well.

In the current system, while ADD does get coded, there is absolutely no funding attached to the diagnosis. The teacher just knows what they are trying to accommodate, though they get absolutely no help in doing so. There are teachers out there with a flare for reaching out to these kids but even the best could use at least a little help. What a lot of teachers end up doing is pushing to have these children assessed so that they can be diagnosed as having Oppositional Defiant Disorder or Conduct Disorder or some other severe Emotional/Behavioural Disorder so that they can get the funding they need as well as an aide in the classroom. A lot of these children are misdiagnosed because a teacher can provide plenty of classroom evidence of what is actually a teacher mishandling the child’s needs but comes out as being the child’s fault. It is positively deplorable, but these poor men and women are desperate. The article says that Alberta offers extensive support, but funding for ADD support was cut in the early 2000’s and now the disorder receives ZERO FUND. So the article is incorrect in that respect.

The only reason my brother was given any special help in school was because his ADD was co-morbid with several learning disabilities as well as fine and gross motor skills difficulties, almost to the point of Developmental Coordination Disorder. He originally received help for his ADD as well, but the funding that gave him access to that funding was cut in 2000.

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[Patte Rosebank]

And yet, governments can afford to piss away billions of dollars on “show-off” projects like the Olympics or hosting the G-20 Summit (for which, security alone is costing a billion dollars).

Yeah, we have our priorities straight.

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[Anonymous]

By the way, I am the physician who is fighting on this child’s behalf. Our TotallyADD reach is everywhere!

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[Anonymous]

Oh Snap! Go Dr. J!

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[Ivriniel]

Speaking as a Toronto teacher, the entire Special Education system is screwed up. When I was at the faculty of Education, we talked about how the ideal model of Special Education was for there to be a variety of options for placement for Special Education students, so you could put the kid where their needs were best met. In Toronto, we have a one-size fits almost all, and it really doesn’t work.

About 8 years ago, the TDSB closed most of its self-contained classrooms and sent the kids back to their home schools. To replace the self-contained classes the board allocated 1 special education teacher to each school, regardless of the size of the school. 200 kids, or 1000 kids, they all got one. What’s more the board left it up to each individual school to decide how that teacher’s program would be set up.

I’ve seen kids with profound learning needs, dumped in the regular classroom for 1/2 days. I remember one girl who was Grade 4 age, but could only recognize a few letters of the alphabet, and not even all the letters in her own name. She spent her mornings in a Special Ed class for language and math, but was expected to take Science, Social Studies, Art, Music, French, etc, in a regular classroom. Needless to say, her program had to be heavily modified.

I’ve spent 2/3 of a school year trying to get a student seen by the In School Support Team. (This was mostly due to an immature VP who didn’t want to have a lot of meetings of the team, and set up a system where teachers had to jump through a whole lot of hoops just to get kids seen.)

It also doesn’t help that there is very little special education in the curriculum in Faculties of Ed. When I went through the Faculty we had a total of 24 hours of Special Ed in the whole program. Looking at the Course components on the OISE website, it doesn’t look like things have changed very much.

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