Excerpts
Stephanie Grant’s voice is filled with her frustration over the lack of child care options for her three children with autism.
...
Grant said she has been trying to get respite care but hasn’t been granted any.
“It’s hard,” she said, getting emotional. “This is a big problem here that we have to figure out.”
When her children were in daycare, they could stay until the end of a work day (5 p.m. or 5:30 p.m.)
Now that they are in school, Grant is unable to register them in their school’s after-school program because she said she was told the inclusive spaces in the program are filled.
...
“We need to look at it from the holistic point of how do we ensure that any child that wants access to this program is included … there are success stories around Canada and across Nova Scotia around how you can create an inclusive program and be sure that every child that wants to can participate,” Tharmaratnam said.
“But there is still a lot of work to do … At the end of the day, if a child is being told they can’t attend something because of their disability, that’s human rights discrimination.”