I am the father of a 17 year old son with severe autism, developmental delays and epileptic seizures.  If his mother and I were to perish in an accident tomorrow my last thoughts would probably be filled with the knowledge that New Brunswick lacks anything resembling adequate residential care and treatment facilities for youths with severe autism and related disorders.  In that regard nothing has changed since the attached 2005 Toronto Star article, in which I am quoted,  concerning the youth who was housed on the grounds of the Miramichi youth correctional facility solely because he was severely autistic.  Shortly thereafter, in part at least because of Toronto media attention, he was moved to the Spurwink facility in Maine. 

As our son ages into adulthood we, his parents, will likely grow feebler and ultimately will die. No adult care facilities for severely autistic adults who require permanent residential care and treatment exist in New Brunswick.  I have worked on this issue over the past decade and met on several occasions during the Lord and Graham government eras with Ministers and even with former Premier Graham.  Even before the Miramichi youth situation arose I advocated with other parents to move an autistic adult out of the Saint John Centracare facility.  I have visited Centracare on more than one occasion and I have also been given a tour by the operators of the Campbellton psychiatric hospital where some autistic adults live out there lives.

With that lengthy advocacy involvement on adult autism care, and lack of government response,  I did not honestly expect this administration, which repeats community and inclusion cliches in many government and official statements, and even pays for a new "community" government department, to actually take action on the issue of adult autism care and treatment.  I say this in the interests of candor not confrontation.  

Despite my skepticism about your philosophically driven approach to government I still have to hope, in the best interests of my severely autistic son and others, that you will, as the Lord and Graham governments did on early autism intervention, autism trained education assistants and reversal of the decision to close the Stan Cassidy tertiary care autism team, look realistically at the issues of adult autism care.  I ask you to take an evidence based approach to adult autism care issues. I ask you to take action.  I ask you to do something about the problem.

In that regard I refer you, once again, to an interview with  New Brunswick autism expert Dr. Paul McDonnell, UNB professor emeritus (psychology) and clinical psychologist, in 2010 in which Dr. McDonnell commented on the need for an enhanced adult residential care network:

The 2005 Toronto Star Article follows. It demonstrates clearly how long these autism youth and adult problems have been festering in New Brunswick. Please take steps now to address these issues that torment so many with autism and their families in New Brunswick.

Walking across the intersection at the corner of King and Carleton Street in Fredericton today I saw former New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham coming from the opposite direction. I was very happy to see him and took advantage of the opportunity to shake his hand and thank him in person for the outstanding contributions he made to the lives of children with autism disorders in New Brunswick. I have thanked him publicly in the media and on this blog site but I appreciated the opportunity to thank him face to face.  

Shawn Graham built on the autism programs started during the Bernard Lord government in provision of quality autism early intervention.  He expanded significantly the number of education assistants and resource teachers with autism training at the UNB-CEL Autism Intervention Training program.  

It was a high point of my day to be able to say thank you in person to Shawn Graham on behalf of my son Conor and the other many children with autism disorders in New Brunswick who enjoy quality early intervention and accommodation of their challenges in achieving meaningful access to an evidence based approach to inclusive education. 

Thank you again Mr. Graham!

Great autism news in New Brunswick as the UNB-CEL Autism Intervention Training Program is being made available for the public.  (Applications available online.) The college program has previously been recommended by US autism experts Dr. Eric Larsson and Dr. David Celiberti. Dr. Celiberti in particular is very familiar with the program and had recommended the New Brunswick autism service delivery model which was based on the program  for consideration by other Canadian provinces.  Unfortunately for New Brunswick's autistic children, students and adults the successful UNB-CEL Autism Training Program, first utilized by the Premier Bernard Lord's Conservative government, and then by Liberal Premier Shawn Graham's government, has been abandoned by the David Alward government and its non evidence based, philosophically driven partners at the NBACL. 

The UNB-CEL Autism Intervention Training program was born in response to requests for tenders for autism training put out by the Lord government. That request resulted from intense and effective advocacy by many New Brunswick parents of autistic children led by the Autism Society of New Brunswick.  The actual program itself was first conceived at a meeting of a committee which was  meeting to establish an autism centre of excellence at UNB in Fredericton.  During a committee meeting a parent advocate member of the committee suggested that UNB should provide training in response to the government tenders. Dr. Paul McDonnell who was at the meeting confirmed that UNB had the professional resources to provide the training.  Anne Higgins, then with UNB-CEL, laid out a step by step process, including necessary time lines, that could be followed to meet the tender requirements. A pilot program was run and the UNB-CEL Autism Intervention Training was born!

Parent advocates, including yours truly, lobbied strenuously for the extension of the UNB training to our schools.  We met fierce opposition from some in the Department of Education who had their own agendas to pursue.  I was even subjected to threats from Department of Justice legal counsel, at the request of the then Director of Student Services, Robert Gerard, to keep me from participating in meetings between the Autism Society and Education department officials to discuss implementation of a commitment by Premier Shawn Graham to increase the numbers of UNB-CEL autism trained education assistants working with autistic students. 

We also met with fierce opposition from the New Brunswick Association for Community Living which included direct opposition from NBACL icon, then NB Human Rights chair, and now Alward transition team member Gordon Porter.  The current Education Minister's wife Krista Carr is an executive officer with NBACL and at the time she also opposed the Autism Society's position that alternative learning environments were necessary for some autistic students and in particular for those receiving ABA based instruction, provided by UNB-CEL autism trained aides, in quieter settings outside the regular classroom.  Danny Soucy is a current member of the Alward government, also affiliated with NBACL, and was also a  public opponent of Autism Society efforts to achieve the flexible inclusion necessary for many autistic children to be educated at all and in particular to receive ABA instruction from UNB-CEL Autism trained aides.

A third force opposing parents advocating for UNB-CEL training for our children was, and is, the union representing education aides, CUPE Local 2745 and its leader Sandy Harding. During the time I was ASNB President I had requested a meeting with Ms. Harding's predecessor to seek the CUPE Local 2745 support for autism trained education aides (TA's).  Ms Harding's predecessor was not interested and she herself upon taking office as Local 2745 president has been openly hostile to any serious training requirement for aides working with autistic students.  

CUPE Local 2745 has used its considerable clout to resist any training requirement and pushed hard for seniority as the only requirement for aides working with children with autistic disorders. As a labour lawyer with a quarter of a century experience, in New Brunswick and federally, I can say that such a lop sided approach to any job posting requirement is almost unheard of and, as the Alward government currently genuflects before CUPE Local 2745, constitutes an abandonment of management rights. Removal of the UNB autism training requirement in favor of pure seniority considerations and refusal to permit learning outside the classroom when necessary also constitute failure to accommodate the autistic disorders, the neurological based disabilities of children with autism contrary to Human Rights Act requirements.   Both the Alward government and CUPE Local 2745 are now discriminating against children with autism disorders by refusing to acknowledge the need for autism training for aides working with children with autism disorders which are in fact serious neurological disorders.

With these three major institutional forces aligned in lock step opposition to the accommodation of New Brunswick's autistic students comes a fourth factor - the current shaky state of the world economy. Economic factors currently provide perfect cover for the Alward government to abandon the quality and integrity of the UNB-CEL autism training for the sloppy in house training that was opposed by the Autism Society New Brunswick and for a surrender of our children's best interests in the face of the adult interests of untrained senior members of CUPE Local 2745.

In this perfect storm the revival for the public of the UNB-CEL Autism Intervention training program, and the quality and integrity it provides, is one bright light in the darkness.  It  is a beacon to guide us and provide hope that better days are ahead.

The foundation for the autism service gains that have been made in New Brunswick over the past several years has been dismantled and shut down for good. The screen image above is what I found when I did a search of the University of New Brunswick web site looking to see what, if any, course would still be offered by the UNB-CEL Autism Intervention Training program.  The content section of the screen, however, was literally blank. The UNB-CEL Autism Intervention Training Program is no more.

I was aware for some time that the Alward-Carr-Porter team would not continue to train education assistants and resource teachers through the program.  Autism training will be done "in house" by an education department hierarchy that resisted the program in the first place because it wasn't their project and because they thought it cost too much.  Now pre-school early intervention autism workers will no longer be trained at UNB-CEL either.  Apparently Minister Carr and his combined education-early childhood development team feels that it can do better by consulting experts to instruct our autism intervention agencies on how to provide their own versions of in house early autism intervention.  Minister Carr and Gordon Porter  will call the services they oversee evidence based but an evidence based autism intervention requires a level of quality and integrity that in house training subject to conflicting adult interests is unlikely to meet.

The UNB-CEL Autism program arose as a response to determined advocacy by parents of autistic children.  The program provided NB`s autistic children and students with quality and integrity in the intervention and instruction they received.  Former Premier Bernard Lord responded very personally, and very constructively,  despite the at times combative nature or our advocacy, to our requests.  His government looked for service providers that could provide the necessary early intervention services.  Rather than import and pay huge fees to import services from Ontario a steering committee of various autism professionals, academics and parents involved with autism issues thought it would be a good idea to develop a program using local expertise.  Premier Lord, and after him Premier Graham,  agreed and UNB-CEL provided the autism training for the services our children needed.

Anne Higgins, a brilliant administrator who at that time was with the University of New Brunswick was a key part of the group that founded the UNB-CEL Autism Intervention Training program.  She put a tight organizational plan together and implemented it  with incredible efficiency.  UNB Professor Emeritus (Psychology) and clinical psychologist Paul McDonnell and UNB Psychology professor Barb D'Entremont led the team at UNB that developed the content for the program.  Private autism agencies were established and the UNB-CEL Autism Intervention Training program was used to train early autism intervention and clinical supervisors for New Brunswick's two official language groups.

New Brunswick parents of autistic children advocated for an extension of the UNB autism training to the school system with requests that teacher assistants and resource teachers working with students with autism also receive the UNB autism training.  Both Premier Lord and Premier Graham, in direct discussions with representatives of New Brunswick's autism community, responded positively.  

The training of early intervention and education personnel working with autistic children and students met with fierce resistance, some of it from career bureaucrats in the higher echelons of the Department of Education and some of it from New Brunswick's inaccurately characterized "inclusion" and "community" movement.  Now with Minister Carr and NBACL inclusion icon Gordon Porter in charge of both early childhood development and schools the UNB-CEL autism training is no longer wanted.   The foundation of our autism gains in recent years has been abandoned. My comments are gloomy but they reflect current realities under this administration. 

I would like to end this comment on a positive note though by thanking all persons involved with the UNB-CEL Autism Intervention Training Program, particularly Anne Higgins, Paul McDonnell and Barb D`Entremont.  I would also like to thank all the parents whose efforts in advocating for early intervention and education assistance for our autistic children led to the establishment of the UNB-CEL autism training.  Without determined, focused autism parent advocacy there would have been no UNB-CEL autism program. Thank you all.