When Ashley Ferreira's five-year-old son was diagnosed with autism in 2020 she never imagined that a five-year wait lay ahead for him to get access to government-funded core therapies.
"I thought that the diagnosis came with help," she said. "It wasn't until I started joining Facebook groups like the Ontario Autism Coalition that I was like, 'Oh.' It was a slap in the face."
Families had been reporting wait times for access to core services under the Ontario Autism Program creeping upward in the past several years, so advocates set about doing a survey of the community.