Alanna

We consider ourselves fortunate in that we recognized something was wrong with Alanna (born November 2007) very early—at about 18 months. She began losing skills—words she had for two months before they went away. She kept losing sounds until she became silent, and all we heard were screeches and screams.

We told our paediatrician, who referred us to a developmental paediatrician. It took two months to get a letter indicating the referral was received, and the letter said it would be "some time" before we could get an appointment. After being told the estimated wait time for a referral for a diagnosis was nine months or longer (by this time we knew the wait times for ABA services), we decided to have a psychological assessment done privately, at significant expense.

The psychologist confirmed our fears: Alanna was diagnosed with severe autistic disorder. We qualified for funding in the Autism Intervention Program at Thames Valley Children's Centre in London, Ontario and are currently waiting for access to IBI. We have begun our own private therapy, and have seen amazing results in the past six months.  We pay over $2,000 a month for this therapy for 15 hours a week and each parent contributes 2.5 hours for a total of 20 hours a week.  This is financially crippling for us but we have no choice.

Alanna was accepted into the government's IBI DFO program in May of 2010.

She is 2.5 years old and we waited a mere nine months, a far cry from the three years some have waited. The regional system has worked very well for us, but it is obvious that having nine regional agencies ensures the service received is highly variable on geography. I am obviously over the moon she is in the program during her most beneficial years (before age three).