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A story about Canadian parents asking for ABA. Of interest is the argument that parents are asking too much and parents wondering what is the difference between asking for ABA and asking for cancer treatment.

A very good article that points out the two sides.

By Michael Tutton

The Canadian Press

Parents of children with learning disabilities are on the legal warpath this fall for costly teaching programs they say could save their children's futures.

In at least four provinces, parents are either expecting key decisions by courts or launching test cases that could mean their kids receive specialized training outside mainstream classes.

But governments defending the cases say if the parents win it could potentially cost provincial coffers millions of dollars. And some special-needs teachers argue similar improvements can be achieved in regular classrooms. A human rights case held in a Moncton, N.B., hotel room last week is an example of the kind of battle being waged.

Bonnie Cudmore, mother of a 14-year-old boy with attention deficit disorder - a medical condition that harms his ability to concentrate in a regular class - has argued the province should pay for her son to attend Landmark East school.

The private boarding school in Nova Scotia costs about $25,000 a year.

Cudmore also argued the province owes her the $75,000 she's spent to date for the small-classroom environment and personal training that has helped her son excel at school and cope with his disorder.

The human rights case has taken 30 days so far - the longest in the province's history - but like many parents in similar conflicts, Cudmore is tenacious.

"Our house is for sale and we basically don't have two cents to rub together and I don't care because it's for my son," she said in an interview.

"We'll go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada with this if we have to."

Across Canada, families are also using human rights acts or arguing Charter of Rights cases, using Section 15 provisions that protect the rights of the disabled.

- Four families of children with autism, a mental disorder, are awaiting an appeal by the province before the British Columbia Court of Appeal. The parents won an earlier decision at trial division when a judge ruled each parent should receive $20,000 for treatment.

The treatment, known as Applied Behaviour Analysis or ABA, is a form of one-on-one therapy administered for up to 40 hours a week for two to three years. It costs between $45,000 and $60,000 a year for each child.

- In Ontario, 28 families are suing the province to receive similar services for autistic children over six years old. The trial is expected to begin within three weeks. The province already provides the service for children under six through the Department of Children and Family Development.

- In Dartmouth, N.S., the principal of Thomas Aquinas school - which teaches children with attention deficit disorders - said parents are preparing test cases that could require the province to pay annual fees of $15,500 to send children to the school.

- Norrah Whitney, a mother of a six-year-old autistic boy, has launched a human rights case in Ontario, arguing that cutting off Applied Behavioural Analysis treatment at age six is a violation of his rights.

Dennis Cochrane, the deputy minister of education in Nova Scotia, says provincial governments are resisting in court for both financial and philosophical reasons.

"Very often it's just a question of resources," he said in an interview. "We have so much money and so many children to serve."

The cost per pupil in the public system is about $5,000 to $6,000, he said. The various lawsuits are asking the provinces to pay fees three to 10 times as high.

Cochrane also asks where the trend toward demanding services outside schools will stop.

"Once you get into the slippery slope and you're saying in the public system you can't meet the needs of disabled children, what does it mean for gifted children at the other end of the spectrum?"

Those arguments hold little water with parents who worry their autistic children can grow so frustrated in regular schools they will descend into intense tantrums, injuring themselves and ending up in institutions.

In Halifax, Joyce Dassonville, the mother of a seven-year-old girl with autism, has quit her job at a downtown law firm to pursue her lawsuit against the province and start an independent school for kids with autism.

She has spent hundreds of hours preparing a Charter of Rights challenge before the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, arguing her daughter Dominique Dassonville-Trudel is entitled to the ABA treatment.

"If she had cancer, the government would pay for her chemotherapy," she said.

"Parents are starting to find out there are very effective treatments that are available and paid for in other places and it's not available to their children."

Lawyers argue the treatments save society huge amounts of money over the longer term.

Birgitta von Krosigk, the North Vancouver lawyer leading the British Columbia case, presented evidence at the trial that said providing the treatment saved up to $1 million per child in future institutional care.

Some special educators are not convinced.

Kathy Myketyn, a lecturer on special-needs education at Acadia University in Wolfville, N.S., said the cases mainly demonstrate provincial governments have to improve what's offered within schools for children with severe learning disabilities.

"Even for those children there can be appropriate kinds of learning and teaching happening with the teacher and the children in a regular classroom context," she said in an interview.

"There is no reason for these children to be trained or taught in these

segregated settings in a very elitist way." Linda Reid, the minister of

state for early childhood development in British Columbia, argues the answer lies in tailoring the programs provided to each child.

She said of the roughly 500 children with autism in the province, many may not need the most expensive treatment.

"There's an entire range of behaviours. There are families today who are treating their child's disorder successfully with speech therapy to the tune of $1,000 a month .-.-. the program has to be matched to the child."