Brant family forced to wait another two years for support of child with autism

A couple in Brant County says their autistic child has been forced to wait two years before being added to the list to receive provincial support services.

They say it’s because of an error, and they want to share their story so others don’t face the same delay.

Zeke King, who is five-years-old, was diagnosed with autism in January of 2024, when he was just two-years-old.

Seven months later, his mother Donna King and his father David were scheduled for an appointment with Lansdowne, the regional care coordinator for Brantford and Brant County.

This also wasn’t their first time navigating the system.

“I’ve got four kids, three with autism,” said King. “We’ve kind of been through a little bit of the system, obviously before, and have a bit of an understanding on how to go about it, how it works.”

Something they also expected: the lengthy wait times.

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An unfortunate reality, according to the president of the Ontario Autism Coalition Bruce McIntosh.

“The kids diagnosed it two, or three, or four years today, they’re not going to get it by school, because the average wait time in Ontario now is about six years,” said McIntosh.

Aware of the backlogs, it wasn’t until earlier this month that King logged onto the Ontario Autism Program’s (OAP) online portal and noticed that Zeke was not registered.

“It wasn’t until I called and asked to escalate it, but for Zeke there was no file in their system,” said King. “That’s when they told me that the file must have never been sent over, and his registration date is now when I started it: July 9, 2026, not Aug. 20, 2024.”

In a letter to the OAP, Lansdowne says it records show Zeke was registered on Aug. 9. 2024.

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It adds that it supports King and David in their assertion that Zeke’s registration should be backdated to that date.

King says she was told the ministry would not.

“They could have easily just fixed this and rectified it, ‘yes we made a mistake, let’s fix this’,” said King. “Alternatively, instead of that, they have pushed Zeke back behind 20,000-plus kids and starting him at the line at 2026.”

“There’s a bureaucracy that is now costing millions of dollars — it will inevitably cause gaps,” said McIntosh. “Things will slow down, things will get overlooked.”

The ministry contacted King last week, a phone call that she shared with CHCH News.

“We don’t have that letter from Lansdowne — we do, but we can’t open it,” said a ministry employee. “So I was wondering if you can still forward that to us, and I’m going to give all of this information over to my management team and I’m sure someone will reach out to you from my management side.”

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While King and David wait for management to reach out, they say they hope what happened to them doesn’t happen to any other parent.

“You think that you’ve done everything that you’re supposed to do, and then you find out that even though you did do everything that you could have done as parents to do that, it still doesn’t get done, and it’s not going to get done,” said King.

“I kind of feel like we failed a way in our own self, because we just want to make sure he has everything that’s needed,” said David.

When CHCH News reached out to Ontario’s Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services, they did not comment specifically on Zeke’s case.

But when asked about his policy on backdating registrations, the ministry said every child deserves the opportunity to learn and thrive.

They added that funding for the Ontario Autism Program increased by nearly $674 million since 2018, and that it’s put nearly $1 billion into the program this year.

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