Part 2: Current Challenges in the Children’s Service System

Many families experience challenges understanding and navigating the children’s service system. Families who have concerns about their child’s development, and are not already connected with a service provider, can have a difficult time figuring out who to turn to or where to go for help.

Families do not always know how to find and interpret information about developmental concerns or to discern which information to trust.

Service providers from other sectors, including primary health care providers, childcare providers, and teachers, may not be familiar with the children’s service system and the full scope of services available to children and youth. As a result, they may not be able to point families in the right direction when they have a concern about their child’s development.

Families may also face barriers to accessing services, such as lack of internet access, lack of transportation to get to services, language barriers and lack of trust in the service system. Some families experience services as patronizing and invalidating of their lived experience, expertise, and priorities, and can feel unwelcome or unsafe. These experiences are more common for families who are racialized or from equity-deserving/marginalized groups.^{footnote 5[5]} This may negatively impact families’ ability to access services and engage in service delivery, which can have negative impacts on outcomes for children and youth.

Once children, youth and their families are connected with children’s services, additional challenges may arise. Certain types of assessments may be conducted within a narrow view of particular interventions, treatments or services, and may not look at the whole child to identify strengths and other potential support needs. This can result in support needs not being identified as early as possible.

Some families find assessment processes intimidating, particularly when they are perceived to be tied to access or funding. Many families find that assessments and program eligibility criteria focus too heavily on their child’s “deficits”, rather than their child and family’s strengths. This may encourage families and service providers to focus on what is “wrong” with the child and perpetuate an ableist view of disability.

Information is not always shared between service providers, requiring families to retell their stories to each new provider they connect with. This may also lead to interactions/assessments that feel repetitive and redundant to the family.

Families may experience services that are disconnected and fragmented, rather than seamless and coordinated. Families may feel they have to seek out services for their child, rather than being supported to connect with the appropriate services to support their child’s needs. Some families are on multiple waitlists, often without a lot of information about what they may receive at the end of it.

See Appendix B for a chart that links the challenges identified in this section, with the functions of SmartStart Hubs that are attempting to address these challenges (see Part 8 for more information on the Hubs functions).