Children living with disabilities deserve better

Let me paint a picture for you — that of a child with learning and behavioural challenges, struggling to be fully included at school. A caregiver seeking advocacy to access diapers for a child with physical challenges. A child needing early intervention, but diagnostic wait times making access to support unfeasible.

These are just a few real experiences faced far too often by far too many families in Manitoba.

Disability is not only a medical condition, but a social one as well. A disability may be present from birth or be the result of an accident or illness; some are visible (e.g., a physical limitation), others may be hidden from view (e.g., a learning disability). While no standard definition of disability exists in Canada, legal processes have affirmed that any disability — no matter the cause or however visible — may have a profound impact on a young person’s life.

Children living with disabilities have fundamental human rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. By ratifying these two treaties, Canada — and by extension, Manitoba — is legally committed to fulfilling the rights of all Canadians living with disabilities.

You might be wondering what kind of commitments I’m talking about — the right to be free from discrimination; the right to share an opinion; the right to dignity, self-reliance and active participation in the community; and the right to be cared for in a family setting if living with immediate family is not possible, to name a few.

The UNCRC alone has 42 distinct articles related to children’s rights. In addition to this, Canada has something called substantive equality, which recognizes that treating everyone “the same” does not produce equal outcomes. For children living with disabilities, substantive equality may require government to provide additional or tailored resources for education, communication or mobility.

This year marks the five-year anniversary of the Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth’s special report, Bridging the Gaps: Achieving Substantive Equality for Children with Disabilities in Manitoba, which examined disability services for children and youth in the province.

Following in-depth review and analysis, nine recommendations were made to increase the effectiveness and responsiveness of disability services. Those recommendations sought to address barriers facing children with disabilities and their caregivers, such as long wait-times for diagnostic assessments, case-management workloads within the disability sector, creating and resourcing a full spectrum of options for respite care and preventing child and family services involvement through the enactment of a legislative mandate specific to children’s disability services, among others.

The report also found that the inequities children with disabilities experience are more pronounced when there are additional layers of discrimination based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class or gender identity.

For instance, Indigenous children living with disabilities are often subjected to jurisdictional disputes that have led to additional barriers in fulfilling their rights to health and social services. This is unacceptable. Young people have the right to access health, education and disability services that are available without delay, disruption or denial, no matter where they live in Manitoba.

The Manitoba government has made limited progress on these recommendations in the five years since the report’s release, despite their obligations to uphold children’s rights.

Eight (of nine) recommendations remain outstanding. Despite various financial investments in recent years, including funding toward wage increases for front-line workers, there is no publicly available data indicating the experiences of children and their families have improved, where wait times, worker caseloads or access to respite are concerned.

One cannot help but wonder whether the Government of Manitoba’s lack of movement to address these issues, particularly five-year-old recommendations from a government oversight body, is due to a lack of will. Sadly, inclusion is often an afterthought, as opposed to the first response. Even the highest levels of government need reminding.

It’s taken the government too long to do too little. Children don’t only deserve a province that sees them, they have a right to a Manitoba that recognizes their inherent dignity and worth and rises to meet their unique needs in the provision of public services.

The Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth (MACY) supports, empowers and uplifts young people and their families to ensure they have all the resources they need to thrive. Keep reading as we submit op-eds on disability-specific issues for upcoming issues of the Free Press.

Sherry Gott is the Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth.