Enhancing our Autism Services
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Over the past year, Kinark’s autism services have shifted and expanded to respond to the needs of children with autism and their families. We adopted innovative strategies and systems to enhance service delivery and increased our partnerships with a broad range of providers to be as accessible as possible to our communities.
In the fall of 2023, we celebrated the opening of two new Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) Centres, one in Thornhill and one in Etobicoke, which significantly expanded our reach and increased access to essential autism services for families, and families have responded. This expansion aligns with our commitment to providing exceptional, evidence-based and individualized services to thousands of families across southern and central Ontario. Read more about these new Centres here. This year, we also successfully launched our Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) program, further diversifying the range of services we offer to children with autism.
In addition to core services, Kinark continues to provide a breadth of programing to kids and families registered through the Ontario Autism Program (OAP). Programs such as our Urgent Response Services (URS), Entry to School (ETS) program, and Foundational Family Services, are offered through our collaboration with the York Simcoe Autism Network, a group of partnering organizations that allow us to work together to promote service excellence and close gaps for families.
We were proud to continue our approach of contributing evidenced-based information to shape children’s policy and services by releasing a research brief earlier this year that explores the effectiveness and sustainability of virtual autism services. Virtual services help us address many of the barriers that families experience when they have to travel long distances to participate in in-person services. We believe that sharing information about the effectiveness and appropriateness of virtual services options with families and other providers is important to improve equitable access for all Ontarians.
We served 3,778 clients across our autism program in 2023-24, and, most importantly, 91% of caregivers who responded to our survey reported that their children were using the skills they learned in our programs in their daily life. It has been a successful year filled with growth and significant achievements, setting a strong foundation for future developments in our services.
To learn more about our autism programs and services, visit the Kinark Autism Services website.