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4.  System Features

This section addresses the systems features that need to be implemented to provide the required benefits.

Individuals should have the authority, power and resources to control their own destinies.   This includes planning for their own futures with their family, friends and advocates, and negotiating for funds, which will assist them in realizing their hopes for future.   The decisions by individuals and their families must be supported, as they are the only ones who can assess the true need.

People with developmental disabilities should have the right to decide where they live and with whom they wish to live in typical community housing.  The goal is to support people to live in community, not in cells of exclusion scattered throughout the community.  

Institutional settings should not be among the range of “service options” available to people.   Consistent with this, nursing homes, as yet another expression of the institutional approach, are not consistent with that vision.  

The new system of supports and services must be more efficient in the use of resources.   The current system dedicates massive amounts of money to services that do harm, services that do not respond to the real needs of individuals, and services that are not used.   People with developmental disabilities, their families and allies, have no interest in such wastes of public monies.

Two fundamental shifts are required.   First, decisions about what is important to fund should be left to the individuals who are to benefit.   It is far better for people who care about their own futures to make such determinations than to leave such decisions to those who do not care.  Second, a system that is initiated by people with disabilities being in control of their own funds will mean that only that which is needed will be purchased, and only that which is received will be paid for.  

A system defined by the choices of individuals will be far more efficient.   It will also rely on individuals, and those close to them, making sure they make good decisions for themselves, especially in terms of money they spend to secure what they need.

Efficiency also means taking advantage of the many sources of funding.   A great deal of social services funding currently dedicated to housing costs and construction dedicated to institutional settings would better be replaced by individuals purchasing their own housing with insured, guaranteed mortgages and creating tax credits and rebates for family homes being renovated to suit family members with a disability.

Individualized funding must be attached to the individual and be portable to enable them to fulfill their role as citizens to live, work and move in Ontario.

Key systems features

• Funding is attached to individuals not to programs


• Universality/fairness: As in health care, everyone who is eligible is entitled to supports, not just those who happen to be first in line.  


• The system is designed to provide speedy responses


• Non-institutionalized modes of service/supports are favored instead of institutional models.  Supports based on individualized funding (such as Special Services at Home (SSAH) for example) should have equitable claim on government resources.


• Allocations are based on personal plans and community capacity, not on institutional benchmarks


• Assessments of support requirements are made by individual, family and friends


• The system must be fair.  Funding for SSAH and other individualized supports should be annualized as other programs are.


• There should be a universal, single application form throughout the province, as opposed to program by program (“silos”) applications


• Income tax system should encourage contributions for disability related expenses through comprehensive tax credits.


• The system is designed to provide seamless responses to changing needs: cradle to grave, annualized, flexible, no program silos, accommodating life transitions

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