Changes to therapy services for Ontario students

There have been changes made to how occupational therapy, physiotherapy and speech therapy services are provided in public schools.

In Durham, Grandview Children’s Centre provides these to students as a contracted service agency.

There have been no changes made to the eligibility for service or the amount of service available to school-aged children.

As of the new year, Grandview is responsible to manage the contracts for these services provided in publicly-funded schools, and receive and process referrals from school boards for these services.

They are also responsible for the Central East Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) and its care coordinators who will no longer be involved in the management of occupational therapy, speech therapy and physiotherapy services in publicly funded schools. Nursing and personal support worker services at schools will however, continue to be provided by the Central East LHIN.

No changes apply to the following:

School boards will continue to make referrals for occupational therapy, physiotherapy, and speech therapy services for eligible children, the waitlist remains the same, but is now overseen by Grandview Children’s Centre, and speech and language services currently provided by the school board speech language pathologists will remain unchanged, and any other services that children and youth currently receive from Grandview Children’s Centre will stay the same.