Children with disabilities in several regions could see their registration in a day camp compromised because Quebec is delaying the announcement of funding for the hiring of chaperones, less than two weeks before school vacations.

The Association québécoise pour le loisir des personnes handicapées (AQLPH) and its 17 regional bodies are urging the Ministry of Education to reveal the amounts allocated to the Programme d'aide financière au loisir des personnes handicapées (PAFLPH).

This program supports access to activities for people with disabilities, a large part of which covers the salaries of day camp counsellors. The distribution of the money is assumed by AQLPH and the regional authorities according to needs.

The issue for day camp organizers is not so much to have the money immediately in their hands, but rather to know the amount of the grant they will eventually receive in order to proceed with hiring, said AQLPH executive director Genevieve Bergeron.

"The whole process is delayed," she said. "As long as we don't know how much money we have to give, we can't start the machine; we have to analyze our requests, notify the organizations that will receive x amount, and then we just have to sign the cheque."

Already, day camps have had to cancel places for disabled children because of a lack of chaperones. And in a labour shortage context, it is difficult to find the staff quickly, said Bergeron.

The AQLPH and regional bodies have sent a series of letters calling on members of the National Assembly in recent days to get things moving.

"Many organizations do not have the means to hire attendants without these grants, and what is most distressing is that we are depriving young and adult persons with disabilities of an enriching experience and parents of an option to balance work and family life," reads the letter sent to Minister Chantal Rouleau.

When asked about the reason for the delay, the Ministry of Education replied that the money would be allocated "shortly."

WAITING UNTIL THE MIDDLE OF SUMMER

This is not a new expectation for the regional authorities that administer the funds. Last year, the money was confirmed in the middle of summer.

In Montreal, Altergo decided to go ahead with the funding, despite the lack of response from Quebec.

"We had anticipated that we would have the same amounts as the previous year," said Altergo executive director Elsa Lavigne. "We had announced the amounts to the organizations, but we did not have the money. So we found ourselves in a situation where the organizations were impatient to receive money that we could not distribute to them. It was quite stressful for us. This year, we decided not to take that risk because we don't know what can happen."

The AQLPH would like to see more predictability in funding with agreements that would establish the amounts over several years, as was the case before.

A QUESTION OF SAFETY

The presence of attendants is not only essential for a child with special needs. It's also a matter of safety for everyone else, said Montreal mother Stephanie Harvey, who has been waiting for months for an adapted spot at a camp in Lachine.

Her son Dominic, seven, has a developmental coordination disorder, which is characterized by slower movements, difficulty changing clothes or putting on sunscreen, said Harvey.

"If he takes three or four times longer to change than the others, and everyone else is going to the pool, they can't leave him alone and can't let the others go to the pool, if there's just one monitor on his group," she said.

Harvey is disappointed at the inequity that prevails in the allocation of escorted spaces compared to regular enrollment.

She applied to the Lachine Recreation Centre in February but only received confirmation a few days ago. The centre will be able to offer the service for three of the five weeks requested by dipping into its operating budget, said Harvey, who has to find another solution for the other two weeks at the last minute.

"We made our request before everyone else, but we got our answer after everyone else," she said.

The Montrealer has launched a petition on the National Assembly website to demand that the government provide recurrent and predictable funding for the inclusion of children with disabilities in camps.

"In theory, legally, day camps cannot refuse an accompaniment service simply because they don't have the funding for the program," said Lefebvre. "But in reality, the situation is quite different because of limited resources."

The AQLPH estimates that 5 per cent of young people attending day camps have special needs.

The office of the Minister of Education did not respond to a request for comment from The Canadian Press.

-- This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on June 11, 2022.