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Six-year-old Crosby Scadding jumps up and down with self-accomplishment after he identifies a “chair” on a flash card.
He attends Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) at Atlas Behaviour Consultation in Oakville. Crosby was diagnosed with severe autism in June 2015 when he was two-and-a-half years old.
Before Scadding started ABA, his father, Joel Scadding, said he was non-verbal, could not recognize his own name, and experienced regular tantrums.

“About 30 hours of therapy (per week) for Crosby and that’s when he really just started to blossom from melting down and scratching our faces and clawing and crying everyday to developing communication and articulating what he wanted,” said Joel .
The therapy is a lot for this family of four to juggle as Crosby attends sessions full-time Mondays and Thursdays and part-time on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
Kelley and Joel Scadding have had to negotiate working from home with their employer and using up vacation time in order to accommodate their son’s various therapies.
After sitting on the wait list for the Ontario Autism Program for more than a year, the family was finally approved in 2017 and they say all of their sacrifices are worth it because the benefits of ABA are too many to list.
“He can take direction. He knows his name. He can do his colours. He counts to twenty. He can sort and match… he’s developing his language as far as identifying and labeling. He understands being able to play and share,” said Kelley.
But ABA can cost thousands per month — especially during a child’s earlier years — when experts say ABA or IBI (Intensive Behavioural Intervention) will lead to better treatment outcomes.
“There’s lots of research that looks at ABA across different ages. Some of the importance in intensity when they are really young is that we can really catch their development when they are young and teach them a lot in a short amount of time,” said Jessica Cauchi, director at Atlas Behaviour Consultation.
“We have a really good chance of changing developmental outcomes.”

The Scaddings said the cost of Crosby’s therapy runs between $4,500 and $6,000 a month. It’s money they are reimbursed for under the former Liberal government’s autism program.
But the family then pays out of pocket for additional therapies to the tune of another $860 per month. That personal expense amount could likely skyrocket after April 1 when the new funding program is set to start.
“We’re not going to have access to any funding really. We make more than fifty thousand dollars a year combined and he (Crosby) is turning seven in September, which means we are going to be busting our humps to raise as much money as possible,” said Kelley.

“We can’t afford the $5,000 per month.”

Many autism advocates believe maintaining funding for ABA during childhood will mean spending less tax dollars when children with autism become adults.
“It’s really important to invest in good ABA for kids now. ABA is correlated to all kinds of great outcomes for some kids. This means they’re moving on to a less restrictive school setting which is obviously much cheaper,” said Cauchi.
“This might mean that you’re moving into a less restrictive adult living environment, a greater chance at living independently, a greater chance of learning job readiness skills and having a job where you’re contributing to our tax situation as opposed using tax money.”

Seniors in Kelowna are voicing concern about some unshovelled sidewalks around the city.
Under a city bylaw, most property owners are required to remove snow and ice from sidewalks and pathways next to their land within 24 hours.
But after a recent snowfall, Wade Ireland took a tumble on an unshovelled path. The fall gave him a black eye, several stitches and a deep cut into his cheek.
Ireland is concerned the city isn’t doing enough to ensure sidewalks are shovelled after a snowstorm.
“I feel that the bylaws people are not doing an effective job of enforcing these bylaws,” Ireland said.
“You’re taking your life in your hands, going out the door getting a prescription filled or going for groceries.”
Kelowna resident Jonathan Keigan, who also struggles with mobility issues, agreed the sidewalks need to be better maintained.
“There are days that I have to look out and realize, it’s too dangerous. If I go out and walk, try to get past there, I’m going to slip and fall, and I’m not willing to risk that,” Keigan said.
Bylaw officers don’t have time to go around checking everybody’s sidewalk, but they do follow up on every complaint, Dan Maja, with Kelowna’s bylaw services, said.
If somebody calls in about an unshovelled sidewalk, a bylaw officer will pay a visit to the property and either speak with the owner or leave a warning on the door to shovel the path, he added.
The fine for failing to comply with the warning is $50.
However, Ireland believes bylaw officers should proactively check sidewalks.
He also thinks the city should consider clearing a path itself if the property owners won’t do it in a timely fashion.
“I’m really concerned about this. I just see it happening every day. People are falling down here, and nothing seems to be getting done. It seems to be falling on deaf ears.”

David Aguilar has built himself a robotic prosthetic arm using Lego pieces after being born without a right forearm due to a rare genetic condition.
Aguilar, 19, who studies bioengineering at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunyain Spain, is already using his fourth model of the colourful prosthetic and his dream is to design affordable robotic limbs for those who need them.

“As a child, I was very nervous to be in front of other guys, because I was different, but that didn’t stop me believing in my dreams,” Aguilar, who is from Andorra, a tiny principality between Spain and France, told Reuters.

All the versions are on display in his room in the university residence on the outskirts of Barcelona. The latest models are marked MK followed by the number — a tribute to the comic book superhero Iron Man and his MK armour suits.
Aguilar, who uses Lego pieces provided by a friend, proudly displayed a red-and-yellow, fully functional robotic arm built when he was 18, bending it in the elbow joint and flexing the grabber as the electric motor inside whirred.
A presentation video on his YouTube channel that he runs under the nickname “Hand Solo” says his aim is to show people that nothing is impossible and disability cannot stop them.

Wendy Schofield knew her father Victor didn’t have too much time left, in late October 2018. The 93-year-old had taken a bad turn over the Thanksgiving weekend, waking up unable to walk and rapidly losing his memory and function to dementia.
She knew he wanted to die at home – being stuck in a nursing home or hospital was one of his biggest worries, she said – so the family did their best.

“I promised him, as long as I was able, we would keep him at home and take care of him,” Schofield said.

But one weekend, he was clearly having issues. “That Saturday before he died, he got so restless that we decided we were going to have to take him to the hospital to get some medication. Nothing we were doing was keeping him comfortable.”
So, she called 911, telling them that it was an end-of-life care situation.
The paramedics who showed up at their door were able to offer more than just a ride to the hospital. Trained under a special palliative care program in Nova Scotia, they provided Victor with medication to soothe him and even came back several times over the weekend to give more help.
“Thank heavens for those two — Trent and Jenny. I can’t say enough about them,” Schofield said.
Nova Scotia paramedics have provided some limited palliative-care services, like medication to help with pain or shortness of breath, review of the care plan and counselling for the family, since 2015. Similar programs exist in P.E.I. and Alberta.
Now, other provinces are jumping on board. The Canadian Foundation for Health Care Improvement and the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer are funding local programs in six new provinces to enable paramedics to deliver palliative care services. They’re hoping to train 5,000 paramedics by 2022.
Participating areas include:

• BC Emergency Health Services
• Saskatchewan Health Authority Regina Area
• Interlake-Eastern Regional Health Authority (Manitoba)
• York Region Paramedic Services (Ontario)
• Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
• New Brunswick Department of Health
• Eastern Health (Newfoundland and Labrador)

This program provides extra options, said Dartmouth paramedic Katherine Houde, beyond what paramedics could do before — which was nothing, or take the patient to the hospital.
“A lot of these patients require really high doses of narcotics or different treatments that we wouldn’t have been allowed to just treat them and leave them at home.”
WATCH: Few Canadians have early access to home palliative care: study
Hospitals can present problems, she said. Palliative-care patients would typically be lower-priority cases in an emergency room, so could be waiting hours in a hallway before they’re seen. Then, they may not have a private room or family might not be as free to visit as they would like.
Having the option to receive care at home can avoid that discomfort. “It’s really just bringing quality of life to people at a time in their life when they might not get that in a hospital. And giving them some dignity too. They’re not being left to lie in a hallway for hours trying to get needs met.”
Houde, who estimates she answers about one palliative-care call every month, finds them the most rewarding part of her job. “It’s probably my favourite kind of call because I feel like it’s where I make the most global difference.”
Paramedics are well-suited to take on this extra work, said Dr. Alix Carter, who oversaw the implementation of the palliative-care program in Nova Scotia and P.E.I.

“There’s really no other service that’s available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that can be at your house within 10 or 15 minutes,” she said.

The program has had a huge impact, she thinks. “It’s amazing to see. We’ve heard the difference that it’s made to families here and to the teams and most importantly to the patients and their families.”
“The first call that we heard, the family called us after to let us know there had been a very peaceful home death and that’s exactly what they had wanted. And it brought tears to our eyes.”

TORONTO – A leaked draft bill revealed Thursday by the New Democrats shows the Ontario government is considering creating a “super agency” to manage health-care services in the province as part of a transformation the Opposition says could open the door to privatization.
Health Minister Christine Elliott said the leaked document was an early draft, but repeatedly refused to rule out further health system privatization by the Progressive Conservative government.
“We are committed to our public health-care system,” she said at a hastily called news conference.
“The way the system operates now is a mixture…but what we want to do is make sure that as we develop our transformational strategy we are looking at strengthening the public part of the system.”
The “super agency,” according to the draft bill, would be in charge of managing health service needs across Ontario, health system operational management and co-ordination, quality improvement, knowledge dissemination, patient relations, digital health and activities relating to tissue donation and transplants.
It would allow the government to transfer “all or part of the assets, liabilities, rights and obligations” of organizations including any local health integration network, Cancer Care Ontario, eHealth Ontario and the Trillium Gift of Life Network to the super agency.
The section that NDP Leader Andrea Horwath warned would lead to privatization says that the super agency “may designate a person or entity, or a group of persons or entities, as an integrated care delivery system” as long as they have the ability to deliver at least two types of health services, including hospital, primary care, home care or long-term care services.
“If there was any doubt that this government is committed to massive privatization in health care, that doubt vanishes with this bill,” Horwath said. “If (Premier) Doug Ford plows ahead with this health-care privatization bill he has got one hell of a fight on his hands.”
Elliott said Horwath’s interpretation of that section was incorrect, but she would not say what it is actually intended to do.
VIDEO: Ontario government introduces new measures to address hospital overcrowding
“She got pretty much everything wrong,” Elliott said. “We will have more to say about our transformational strategy in due course, but for the purposes of today it’s important to remember it’s not all finalized. What was seen was a draft.”
The leak came as the premier’s special adviser on health care released a report saying that “tough decisions” will be required to address hospital overcrowding, which sees at least 1,000 people treated in the hallways of the province’s hospitals on any given day.
The report by adviser Dr. Rueben Devlin and the premier’s council on improving health care touched on the current 21 health-related government agencies that support the design and delivery of health care in the province.
Ontario’s health-care system can be characterized as decentralized, large and siloed, the report said. The agencies are not always well-aligned “and there is limited strategic oversight to ensure the efficient and co-ordinated use of resources,” it said.
VIDEO: Draft bill leaked shows Ontario government considering health‘super agency’. Travis Dhanraj reports.
Devlin’s next report is set to contain a series of recommendations, but some themes identified in the first document included a greater need for innovation and efficiency to decrease hospital overcrowding.
“Tough decisions will be required to address the challenges facing our health-care system, while we continue to champion the health-care professionals already leading great work in our communities,” Devlin wrote in the report.
Eliminating hallway health care will require dealing with other areas where people get treatment, Devlin said.
VIDEO: Ontario Health Coalition warns of hospital amalgamation consequences
“Hallway medicine is not a hospital issue, it’s a systems issue,” he said in an interview. “We know that we need to improve on primary care, we need to improve on access to long-term care, better home care and a real focus on mental health and addictions.”
A government health-care survey found that 41 per cent of people who went to the emergency department could have been treated by their primary care doctor, and just one-third of hospital patients are admitted to an in-patient bed from the ER within the eight-hour target.
The report defines hallway beds as those in hallways, emergency department stretchers or other unconventional spaces such as alcoves that are not properly equipped to treat patients, Devlin said.
In October, almost 16 per cent of days spent in hospital were by patients waiting for care elsewhere. The largest proportion of that was people waiting to be transferred to long-term care, the report said, where the average wait time to access a bed is 146 days.
Natalie Mehra of the Ontario Health Coalition said claiming that those patients waiting for other spaces are blocking beds is a partial explanation, at best, and Ontario needs more hospital beds.
“What happens in Ontario’s overcrowded hospitals is that all the beds in the wards are full because so many beds have been closed down,” she said.

Too much screen time can negatively affect a young child’s development, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Calgary.
The study, published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, followed a group of 2,441 children between 2011 and 2016, measuring their screen time as well as their progress in meeting various developmental milestones.
The researchers found that higher levels of screen time at two and three years old was associated with poorer performance on a developmental screening test by age five.
This means that children weren’t meeting benchmarks in communication, social skills, problem-solving and motor skills, said Sheri Madigan, a lead researcher on the study and assistant professor in psychology at the University of Calgary.

“When children are watching a considerable amount of screens at the ages of two and three, we’re seeing some lasting impacts on their development.”

In this study, two-year-olds were spending an average of 2.4 hours using screens daily. Three-year-olds were spending 3.6 hours, and five-year-olds, 1.6 hours. The Canadian Paediatric Society recommends that children between the ages of two and five use screens for less than one hour per day.
Watch below: One in four Canadian kids start school not ready to learn and a new Alberta study suggests one of the causes is too much screen time. Su-Ling Goh reports.
Most Canadian children get far more screen time than that, said Dr. Michelle Ponti, head of the pediatric society’s digital task force, and a lead author on the CPS’s guidelines. Research is starting to show that this is associated with some negative things, she said.

“We’re finding early literacy delays, we’re finding delays in school readiness skills, we’re finding delays in social and emotional skills.”

Because screen time is generally a sedentary activity, she said that research is also starting to show an association with physical consequences like a higher likelihood of being overweight or obese.
WATCH: How much screen time should young children have?
According to Dr. Mark Tremblay, director of healthy active living and obesity research at the CHEO Research Institute, this study is important because it measured direction — that screen time caused the poorer test scores, not that kids who already had behaviour issues, for example, were more likely to spend a lot of time on screens.
He’s concerned that the children were missing developmental milestones. “That’s a trajectory that they’re on. So what’s the consequence at the next measurement point? And the next measurement point?”

“We don’t know how far past that these delays in achieving developmental milestones will last,” Madigan said.

Children don’t learn from screens the same way that they learn from live people, or by doing things, Ponti said. “They don’t know what they see on a 2-D screen, how to transfer that into 3-D life.”
She also believes that how children use screens is important, as well as how much they use them, something that wasn’t addressed in this study. An 18-month-old baby using Skype to interact with their grandparents won’t come to harm, she said, because the child’s parents are explaining what’s happening, showing their toddler how to wave to grandma and so on.

“It’s when we just plunk our kids in front of screen as kind of that digital babysitter, we don’t know what they’re looking at, what they’re accessing, we’re not interacting with them, that’s where the dangers come in.”

It’s easy for parents to fall into the trap of handing their child a phone to quiet them when they’re having a temper tantrum, she said, but that reinforces bad behaviour. While everyone will do this on occasion, she suggests that parents develop a plan for where and how to use screens in their lives, and try to stick to it.
“If you plan that you’re going to have some screen-free times and screen-free zones in your life, I think you’re going to be less likely to fall into the trap of whipping it out every time your child acts up.”

A Canadian Health Measures Survey states that adults between the ages of 18 and 79 can spend about four hours a day being physically active, most of the activity being light, and more than nine hours sitting. It found seniors can spend more than 10 hours sedentary.
“One of the biggest things we see in aging populations is there is a decline in flexibility muscle mass and strength, that is just a natural progression as you age,” Trench Fitness Owner in Regina, Neil Tkatchuk said.
“Weight training combats that, exercise where you’re moving your body and moving through your hips, you’re going to see a lot less of senior’s hip and back issues that do have, because they are moving the way the body is designed to move.”
The Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines recommend 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity weekly. A study by Statistics Canada shows that more than half of Canadian adults report they were at least moderately active in their leisure time but a 2014/2015 Canadian Health Measures Survey indicates that only 17 per cent meet the current guidelines.
“I think the guidelines are very generalized. Where when we look at long-term health, we really need to make sure that we are focusing on specific types of exercise.” Tkatchuk said. “So when we talk about vigorous or moderate exercise, there is going to be a big difference of doing something like weight training and doing a heavy set of eight or 10, compared to taking your dog out for a walk.”
“Those are going to have dramatically different effects on the body, your body composition, health, strength, muscle mass and all of those things that pertain to health as you age.”
87-year-old Laura Malesh of Regina is part of the people who meet the guidelines.  She said is active up to five hours a day and it is important for her to work out, to keep her in shape for one of her favorite past times.

“I keep exercising, it motivates me to stay ready for the golf season,” Malesh said.

Malesh spent 40 years playing professional softball and her career has landed her a spot in the Saskatchewan Hall of Fame. Her workouts aren’t as vigorous as they once were. Now she uses some workout machines, a band and does core exercises on a mat.
“I’ve been exercising all my life, ” Malesh said. “It just makes you feel good.”