NB'ers with Severe Autism Disorders Are Not Included in New Brunswick's "Inclusive Community"

New Brunswick's "inclusive" "community living" model is not a bridge to a better life for adults with autism disorders.  There are huge gaps in the model.  Group home staff are not autism trained and are not professionally supervised.  Those who don' fit in, including those with severe autism disorders are excluded, banished to live in psychiatric hospitals in New Brunswick and outside the country.

New Brunswick tells the world that it is "inclusive" and talks incessantly about our "community living".   In fact if a child, youth or adult suffers from a severe autism disorder they are not included in a community, they are excluded, in some cases literally excluded from New Brunswick, and sent next door to the State of Maine.  Desperate ad hoc measures are resorted to, sometimes at great public expense.   Instead of building a modern, autism specific educational and residential care and treatment facility for New Brunswick adults with severe autism disorders they are sent to live out their lives in psychiatric hospitals. 

The group home system staffed with untrained personnel described in the second article below, the Toronto Star article, remains the same today.  The homes are not appropriate places for persons with severe autism disorders. Even some moderately affected by autism can not function in these locations. The NB civil servant quoted in the Toronto Star article that follows this comment said the group home system in place then, 9 years ago, worked well "for most people".  "Most people" 9 years ago did not include, and most people today, does not include youth and adults with severe autism disorders. 

Community living for New Brunswickers with severe autism disorders does not exist.   Following are 2 reported examples stretching back 9 and 11 years of how our so called inclusive community has treated, and continues to  treat, NB autistic youth and adults with severe autism, 2 examples which highlight the need for the residential care, treatment and community centre envisioned by NB autism expert Paul McDonnell : 

A.  11 years ago members of the Autism Society New Brunswick including the father of an adult son protested at the Centracare institution in Saint John where the man's autistic son was living:

PARENTS DEMAND RELEASE OF AUTISTIC MAN FROM PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL FREDERICTON, New Brunswick, Canada:

[NOTE: I have removed from the article the actual names of the father and son at Centracare  and of a mother advocate and son no longer publicly active on autism issues, and substituted non representative initials -HLD]

Parents with autistic children confronted New Brunswick's Family and Community Services Minister, Tony Huntjens, on July 25 and demanded the release of a 21-year-old autistic man being held in a psychiatric hospital in Saint John.

"This is the most difficult thing I have ever faced," says AB, who is trying to get his autistic son, GB, out of Centracare, a psychiatric hospital in Saint John. His son has been there for more than a year and AB says he hasn't been given a reason why. "I cannot believe that this kind of lack of compassion and this kind of atrocity will go on so long as it has gone."

Other parents of autistic kids from Fredericton, Moncton and Miramichi came to support AB. But they say their fight goes beyond freeing GB.

"We here today are a group of parents with autism. We live, eat and breathe autism. We know what the struggles are, but as you well know, the incarceration of GB into Centracare is totally unacceptable," said Shirley Smallwood.

AB and his supporters walked from the legislature to Family and Community Services offices. They confronted the Health Minister, who says its takes time to solve problems. "I'll try to intervene and work with the education system and the parents to see if we can come up with a solution."

The province has set aside Canadian$2.8 million for treating autistic children under the age of five. The group of parents want to meet the Minister again to discuss how treatment can be extended to an older age and be covered by Medicare. Hutchins has agreed to meet AB on July 28 regarding his son. GB.

The protesters claimed that the mental-health facility was not well-suited to the needs of autistic individuals and that GB'S scondition was deteriorating.

GB was placed in Centracare by the Department of Family and Community Services in March. The move was against the wishes of his parents and against the advice of health specialists, the group claimed.

New Brunswick does not have a mental-health facility specifcally designed to treat autistic individuals.

AB said his son was now a shell of his former self, after living in an open Centracare ward. "We see death in his eyes ... every week when we go and visit him," AB said on July 25. "His eyes haunt us." The group planned to take its protest to the Family and Community Services offices on Queen  Street. The parents also want the government to deliver a form of treatment called Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA) to autistic sufferers in the province.

The Tory government has promised to make the service available to children aged two to five, but the parents argue that is not enough.

One local mother, NL, said the treatment could cost $40,000 a year. Her six-year-old son, TL, is too old to access the services, which still have not been made available to autistic children.

NL said the service was already available in five other Canadian provinces: Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta.

The treatment had been shown dramatically to improve individuals' autistic disorders, she said. "I don't want to see any other children or families go through this," NL said.

There are roughly 1,000 individuals with autism in New Brunswick.

AB said the group would keep protesting until the Tory government released his son from Centracare. They have collected a petition with 800 signatures supporting GB's release, and they intend to have the petition tabled in the legislature after a new sitting begins next week.

A Liberal critic, Michael Murphy, has promised to take up GB's case
in the legislature.

(Sources: CBC; The Daily Gleaner, July 25, 2003)

2. Nine years ago a 13 year old boy was housed, temporarily, on the grounds of the Miramichi Youth Correctional Centre in a visitor's apartment.  The boy was purportedly sent to Maine aftewards to the Spurwink centre.  9 years later the same inadequate system that brought national notoriety to New Brunswick is still in place.

Autistic boy kept in New Brunswick jail

No other place for him to stay 13-year-old must go to U.S. hospital 

The Toronto Star, KELLY TOUGHILL, ATLANTIC CANADA BUREAU, Oct. 19, 2005

HALIFAX—A 13-year-old autistic boy now living in a New Brunswick jail compound will be sent out of Canada because there is no home, hospital or institution that can handle him in his own province Provincial officials confirmed yesterday the boy is living in a visitor's apartment at the Miramichi Youth Centre and will be moved to a treatment centre in Maine by November.

They stressed he is not under lock and key, has no contact with other inmates and is living outside the high wire fence that surrounds the youth detention centre. Nevertheless, the jailhouse placement and the transfer to Maine have outraged mental health advocates and opposition critics.

"They put this boy in a criminal facility because he is autistic," said Harold Doherty, a board member of the Autism Society of New Brunswick" Now we are exporting our children because we can't care for them. This is Canada, not a Third World country.``We are supposed to have a decent standard of care for the sick and the vulnerable, but we don't." 

Liberal MLA John Foran echoed his concern. "This boy has done nothing wrong, is not the subject of any court order, but is in a penal institution." Provincial officials yesterday insisted critics are misrepresenting the nature of the boy's situation and that in fact the province has done everything it can to help him. "This individual is not being held, and is not incarcerated," said Lori-Jean Johnson, spokeswoman for the family and community services department. "He has housekeeping, bath and a separate entrance. We are just utilizing existing resources."

Privacy laws prevent officials from discussing anything that would reveal the boy's identity, including details of his previous living situation and the whereabouts of his parents. This much is known: He suffers from a severe form of autism and is a ward of the state, under the guardianship of the minister of family and community services. He was living in a group home until recently, but became so violent that he was judged a danger to himself and others. At a psychologist's recommendation, he was moved to a three-bedroom apartment on the grounds of the Miramichi Youth Centre, a prison for about 50 young offenders. Two attendants from a private company watch the boy around the clock, at a cost to taxpayers of $700 a day. Johnson said she does not know any details of his care. 

Doherty said the jailhouse placement and move to Maine highlight the desperate need for better services for autistic children in New Brunswick and across Canada. He said staff at most group homes in New Brunswick aren't trained to deal with autism and don't understand the disorder. "If you don't understand autism, things can become very bad very quickly," said Doherty, who has a 9-year-old son with the disorder. "We have been pushing for (better facilities) in New Brunswick for several years. This is not a crisis that has popped up in the last two days. Residential care is a critical element for these people and it is not being provided."

Johnson said the provincial system of group homes and institutions that care for children and adults with psychiatric disorders and mental disabilities works for most people. "We do have existing resources, but once in a while, there will be an exception. Here, we are looking at a very extreme case." The boy will be moved to an Augusta, Me., treatment centre at the end of the month, said Johnson.

The centre, run by a non-profit group called Spurwink, specializes in dealing with autistic adolescents. A Spurwink representative did not return a phone call from the Toronto Star. Provincial officials could not detail the cost to keep the child at Spurwink, nor did they have information about why he's being sent to Maine, rather than a Canadian facility in another province.

New Brunswick's group home community model does nothing to help those with severe autism disorders and even some moderately affected by autism.  We can not pretend that it does. What is needed, what has been needed for more than a decade, is the model described in 2010 by Paul McDonnell:

Paul McDonnell, September 2010

"Our greatest need at present is to develop services for adolescents and adults. What is needed is a range of residential and non-residential services and these services need to be staffed with behaviourally trained supervisors and therapists. In the past we have had the sad spectacle of individuals with autism being sent off to institutional settings such as the Campbellton psychiatric hospital, hospital wards, prisons, and even out of the country at enormous expense and without any gains to the individual, the family or the community.

We need an enhanced group home system throughout the province in which homes would be linked directly to a major centre that could provide ongoing training, leadership and supervision. That major centre could also provide services for those who are mildly affected as well as permanent residential care and treatment for the most severely affected.  Such a secure centre would not be based on a traditional "hospital" model but should, itself, be integrated into the community in a dynamic manner, possibly as part of a private residential development.The focus must be on education, positive living experiences, and individualized curricula. The key to success is properly trained professionals and staff."  (Bold highlighting added - HLD)