Funding changes harming Indigenous children in rural areas, Sault group warns

CTV News

2 days ago

Alana Macintyre and her staff at the Spark Rehabilitation Centre in the Sault say a lack of funding is forcing layoffs and harming service to clients.
Alana Macintyre and her staff at the Spark Rehabilitation Centre in the Sault say a lack of funding is forcing layoffs and harming service to clients in rural areas.
Alana MacIntyre, owner of Spark Rehabilitation in the Sault, is up in arms over changes to Jordan's Principle that have forced layoffs of nearly half of her staff.
MacIntyre said the vast majority of those layoffs are for workers in rural areas, whose clients will soon no longer have services close to home.
Spark
Alana MacIntyre, owner of Spark Rehabilitation in the Sault, is up in arms over changes to Jordan's Principle that have forced layoffs of nearly half of her staff.
Jordan's Principle is a human rights principle established by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to ensure First Nations children do not face gaps, delays or denials in accessing government services because of their identity as First Nations children.
Half of the clients at Spark for services through Indigenous Services Canada's Jordan's Principle. Now, those applications are being stalled, as the government states they can only be approved by a national review committee.
'Last week I sent an email asking, you know, when will this file be adjudicated?' MacIntyre said.
'I have a family asking, we can't give you we can't give you timelines. And yet on the website, it says five days. We've been waiting for over a year.'
'The suffering that we see on a day-to-day basis with our families, I wish that the people in Ottawa could see it and understand that when they don't adjudicate a file, it's not an ISC number.'
— Alana MacIntyre, owner of Spark Rehabilitation
She said the 224 stalled applications relate to nearly 175 Indigenous clients, mostly for speech pathology, occupational therapy and behaviour supports that MacIntyre said should fall under the new parameters for funding.
The centre has had to lay off 30 staff from Pic Mobert to Sturgeon Falls who work with clients in their communities. That means those clients will be without the services they require.
'The suffering that we see on a day-to-day basis with our families, I wish that the people in Ottawa could see it and understand that when they don't adjudicate a file, it's not an ISC number,' MacIntyre said.
'It's a child, it's a family.'
MacIntyre said that the federal government told her last Friday that she would not be paid retroactively for clients on Jordan's Principle contracts. She said that her business is owed roughly $300,000 from Indigenous Services Canada.
'It's so unethical to these children and families,' MacIntyre said.
'The government is now saying they're not going to pay me for a contract that they approved and provided me, you know, written emails stating that I could continue until the file was depleted. I don't know how somebody is allowed to do that.'
Indigenous Services Canada did respond to requests from CTV News to comment on this story.