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While you wait

A plan for the years between a diagnosis and funded therapy. Free, no account, and written for every family in Ontario — not only ours.

Let us say the thing nobody says out loud

Most families registered with the Ontario Autism Program are waiting without funding, and the wait is measured in years rather than months. If you are in that position, you are not at the back of the queue because you did something wrong. You are in the same place as the great majority of families in this province.

Every autism centre's website, including ours, is written for people who are about to become clients. This page is for the years before that. There is nothing to buy here and you do not have to be one of our families to use it.

What is actually worth doing

Tick things off as you go. At the bottom of the page you can print a list of whatever you have left, so you have one page to work from instead of this whole website.

0 of 0 done

In the first week

Protect your place in the queue

Almost everything else can wait. These two cannot, because the queue runs on registration date.

Register with AccessOAPCall 1-833-425-2445. Free, commits you to nothing, and it sets your place in a queue you cannot join retroactively.
Create your AccessOAP online accountThe invitation to funded services arrives through it. Families miss invitations because the account was never set up.
Put the diagnosis letter somewhere you will find itPhotograph it and email it to yourself. You will be asked for it more times than you expect.

In the first month

Find the money that is not the OAP

Most families we speak to are leaving something on the table here, usually without knowing it exists.

Check your extended health insuranceMany workplace plans cover speech-language and psychology. Ask what the annual limit is per child, and whether both parents' plans can be combined.
Look into the Disability Tax CreditA federal credit, entirely separate from the OAP. It can be backdated, so it is worth doing early rather than perfectly.
Ask AccessOAP what you qualify for right nowSeveral supports are available to registered families before core funding begins. They will not always be offered unless you ask.

In the first three months

Get the school on side

School is where your child spends most of their week, and it costs nothing to make it work better.

Make an All About Me page for your childOne page: strengths first, then how they communicate, sensory triggers and what helps. Give it to the teacher and the educational assistant. Build one free here.
Ask the school about an IEPAn Individual Education Plan is a school board process, funded separately from the OAP. You do not have to wait for autism funding to start it.
Ask about the entry to school programmeIf your child is heading into kindergarten or Grade 1, there is a specific OAP programme for that transition.

Through the first year

Look after the people, not just the file

This is the part that gets skipped, and it is the part that determines how the next few years feel.

Find one other parent who understandsA local group, a friend of a friend, anyone. Parents tell us this made more difference than any single service.
Write down small wins with the dateYou are with your child every day, so change is invisible to you. A note saying "August: asked for shoes" is worth a great deal in February.
Sort out one thing for the siblingsBrothers and sisters carry a lot quietly. An hour a week that belongs only to them counts as an intervention.
Ask for help before you are desperateIf things become urgent there is a separate OAP pathway and you do not have to wait your turn. Ask us and we will point you to it.

Six months before you expect the invitation

Be ready to start in a week, not three months

The most common thing we see: funding arrives and then three more months disappear while a family finds a provider. That time is avoidable.

Visit two or three providers nowBefore you have money. You will ask better questions and nobody is selling to you yet. We are happy to be one of them, or not.
Ask each one what their waitlist isGood providers have their own queues. Knowing this in advance is the difference between starting in March and starting in June.
Write down your three goalsNot clinical goals. Yours. "I want him to be able to tell me when he is hurt." That sentence will shape the whole programme.
Start a receipts folder nowYou have to report how OAP funding is spent. Set up the folder before there is anything in it.

Your plan

Everything you have not ticked, on one page you can print or save.

What is left to do

From The Crystal Ladder Learning Centre · crystalladder.com · (905) 265-0050

Read the funding guide

Things that are free right now

None of these require OAP funding, a diagnosis in hand, or any relationship with us.

A social story for any first visitOur printable story for a first appointment works for any clinic, not only ours. Use it here.

An All About Me profileOne page about your child for teachers, dentists, coaches and sitters. Build one here.

A plain-English funding guideWhat the OAP actually is, in language that assumes nothing. Read it here.

Public library resourcesMost Ontario library systems lend sensory kits and visual timers, and nobody knows it.

And one thing from us

If you are waiting and you have a question, call us. Not a consultation, not an assessment, not a sales call — a question.

What does this letter from AccessOAP actually mean?
Is what I am seeing at home something to worry about?
What should I be asking the school?
Is this provider any good?

We will answer honestly, including when the honest answer is that we are not the right people to ask. You do not have to be a client and we will not put you on a mailing list.

(905) 265-0050