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Changes ahead for students who need assistance

Alberta Education and AHS cuts could impact school-age children significantly
Aspen View School sign_WEB
Aspen View Public Schools is left to fill in the gaps left by changes from Alberta Education and Alberta Health Services which could leave children with complex needs vulnerable. File

ATHABASCA — In a difficult report to Aspen View Public Schools trustees Sept. 10, director of student services Shannon Smith delivered a laundry list of changes the division is facing after Alberta Education and Alberta Health Services (AHS) made sweeping changes to programs at their meeting Sept. 10. 

Aspen View used to be part of a Regional Collaborative Service Delivery (RCSD) model that allowed for a pooling of money and sharing of resources to support students who needed assistance with many things — from speech-language pathology, help for hard-of-hearing or sight-impaired students and being able to recommend students for mental health and addiction counselling and Program Unit Funding (PUF). 

Now the government has dissolved the RCSD model across the province and reduced PUF, putting more strain on school divisions to pick up the pieces, Smith explained. 

“First of all, I think that there's no worse time for changes in things like the RCSD model and changes in the Alberta Health Services model than during a pandemic,” Smith said. “Because certainly as we try and understand our life day-to-day moving forward through the challenges that face us in this current landscape, we also are having to look at what will ultimately be a reduction in services to some of our most vulnerable kids.” 

Smith said there are also concerns AHS has not done enough to inform families of the changes made surrounding supports for students and how those changes will impact them. 

“As we're talking to parents who are saying, ‘I want this service for my child, why can't I get this service for my child’ we are ending up having to be the unpopular messenger,” said Smith. “So, I think that if I had unlimited power, that would be my wish — that Alberta Health would come out with some messaging to explain the difference in the changes in their service model — because then we're not always trying to explain something that's not really ours to explain.” 

The collaborative delivery model included input from Aspen View, Grand Yellowhead Public School Division, Northern Gateway Public Schools, Living Water Catholic School Division, Pembina Hills School Division, Canadian Covenant Reformed School, Evergreen Catholic School Division, Yellowhead Koinonia Christian School as well as AHS Allied Health North Zone, AHS Addictions and Mental Health, North Central Alberta Child and Family Services including Family Supports for Children with Disabilities (FSCD) and Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation. 

“The Aspen Collaborative supported Aspen View for one psychologist, some art therapy money, a music pilot and travel. But in addition to that ... we had the benefit of pooled resources … to do a lot of remarkable training and cross training,” Smith said. 

Smith added Aspen View was able to provide training for every school division that participated in the Aspen Collaborative to do autism assessments. 

“And that in itself is significant when you look at 18 months to two-year waits for our families to get into the Glenrose (Rehabilitation Hospital in Edmonton). So, there were a lot of benefits to being part of the RCSD and I think that in speaking to other people in other RCSD collaboratives, I was certainly in one of the best” she said. 

Smith noted the networking in the RCSD developed the relationships that are significant, and even without the official RCSD, the groups are still pooling resources to see how they can still try and meet needs for children. 

"Pembina Hills would hire as many as they could and we always were unable to hire enough and we would get the leavings if you will a little,” said Smith. “I could hire a little bit of time for SLP. So, depending on how you look at it — cup half empty, cup half full — we still have that part, we were always paying that money, we will continue to pay that money. The problem is, though, that we know that the pot is shrinking.” 

To add to the bad news, June 30 AHS held a Zoom meeting with the RCSD and other stakeholders to inform them the AHS model was changing meaning no more SLPs coming into the schools and no assessments for students who may qualify for programming and funding grant services. 

"(AHS) let us know that they will no longer be serving the needs of children of school age. So, if once a child is in school, the expectation is that their speech language needs and their occupational therapy needs are going to be met by the school district,” Smith said. “That is a huge undertaking, and I don't need to tell you what a huge implication that has at all levels.” 

The exemption of that is if a child has an illness, surgery, accident, or a pre-existing condition that gives them complicated medical needs, then AHS will serve those children, but everyone else is to be covered at school including pre-school to Kindergarten. 

"I don't think it's any accident that these things are all happening at the same time,” said Smith. “The funding in the PUF grant used to cover students from pre-school for two years of preschool and one year of kindergarten. They could start and be diagnosed as early as two years and eight months of age. 

So, in our world that would mean that if a little person was identified as having severe needs, that they could be in a preschool program for two preschool years, and then they would go to their kindergarten year. And we would have had the funds – up to about $25,000 a child – to provide those extra services that they would need at the very beginning of their journey in education. This year, it's been changed so that PUF is only for preschool aged children.” 

This means Aspen View will have to try and do as much as possible with less, including referring students to mental health and addictions counselling. 

“Not to be a total Debbie Downer, but there's one little more piece of bad news,” Smith said. “So, mental health and addictions with Alberta Health has always been a partnership that we've been really proud of and they've changed their model in keeping with the rest of their department. The biggest change there is that at one time, we were actually congratulated for having a very seamless system of referral for students that needed higher levels of mental health intervention than schools were mandated to provide.” 

Schools will no longer be allowed to have Student Service Consultants make referrals to those services; only parents, mature minors or physicians can make referrals.  

“Children who want to access addictions supports need to do it by a parent phoning or their physician phoning, or if they are mature minor, they can phone but it has to happen at the health unit,” said Smith. “So, I think that we've seen that there's a real shift this year in how we're being asked to provide services and I think that there will be there will be some significant challenges to doing things that won't be the way we used to, but we're going to do the very best we can and we're not going to leave anybody out there on the ice floe.” 

Smith added that it will be a challenging year but there are a lot of creative minds in the district and she is hopeful Aspen View can honour both their fiscal responsibilities and responsibilities to the students. 

"We will maintain the service providers that we've had in the past few years' time, and we are able to do that because really positive relationships with them,” she said. 

[email protected]  

Heather Stocking, TownandCountryToday.com  

Follow me on Twitter @HLSox 

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