I can start.
I think one of the big gaps is access to the appropriate kind of intervention. We have this discrepancy in models across the country where some provinces give a set amount of money to a family. For autism, $20,000 will buy some services.
I would say a lot of parents who have moderate incomes are spending over $50,000, and many with lots of money are spending over $100,000. So there are huge differences in what families are able to get. Families in, say, Ontario, who don't qualify for the severe category get nothing unless there's some respite special services money, but even that was frozen this last year. They would be thrilled to get $20,000. We know that some families have moved to, say, Alberta, because they're more likely--or were in the past, at least--to get some of those solid dollars that they could count on.
I think a huge gap is access for everybody to some form of intervention. I think another gap is a consistent approach across the education system. We could put a lot more of the treatment dollars, IBI, ABA dollars, the behavioural intervention dollars, into preschool years and after-school programs, if parents had confidence that the education system was trained to provide the specialized kind of behaviourally delivered programs the children need to varying degrees.
Until we have confidence that the education system can do that, parents will continue to feel that they have to buy a lot of services or try to access services outside of the educational system.
If we had integration of the ministries to provide those services, that would be a key part, I think, of what the national strategy needs to be, but it's a long, slow process to get every teacher and every teacher's assistant trained in the behavioural techniques needed.
I'd like to see educational assistants who specialized in autism and had training so that parents could say “Okay, I know the class my child is going in has a teacher and an assistant and a support team that all really know autism, and the treatment will go on at school. I can just be a parent at home.”
The other big gap, and it's an enormous vacuum, is when children leave school. We have more and more young people...some going on to college and university, but even then still having nowhere that they can fit into in terms of the workplace and the community. I believe it is possible to develop services that would meet the needs of children and young adults at all different levels of capability so that they could feel like worthwhile citizens.