Our Voices – Short Testimonials

• Facilitators are very skilled, attentive and caring. In only a couple of meetings, they allowed my daughter to discuss some issues that I as a parent was not even aware of. This helped my family and it would not have happened had the facilitators not had the experience and sensitivity to keep this delicate conversation going and support my daughter and I.

• My facilitator helps to really see my son, to get feedback from him, to navigate the DSO, provide support and keep the focus on my son, facilitators have insight.

• I like my facilitator a lot. I am very happy with her and I think eventually I can live on my own when my mom needs to leave the city.

• We have been looking for facilitator for 7 years, we have been perplexed, confused and now somewhat enlightened since we met our facilitator in September. The facilitators perspective is refreshing approach to understanding my daughter’s needs. We’ve had a lot of input, but none of these have resolved her life goals. I would like to see Independent Facilitation evolve. A group with this experience really takes the pressure off of the parents, it really makes a difference.

• I have really grown as a person with the support of my facilitator.

• I just started recently with a facilitator, she has already helped me with my fear of what will happen to my son when we are gone.

• When I met my Independent Facilitator, my daughter was on the couch for months. She’d graduated high school but had nothing to do. My facilitator showed me how to apply for Passports, the school had only helped her apply for ODSP. Now, she is very happy, she goes to an employment support program and just started back at George Brown College in December! Our facilitator lets us know about free events and resources we can use in our family. We didn’t know about any of this before. Young people need a life, they are frustrated, they need friends. Without this support of a facilitator, my daughter will go into crisis again. I cannot work full-time because I will need to accompany her to learn routes on the TTC, our passports funding won’t cover the number of hours of support she will need in the community.

• I like my facilitator – she has helped me a lot and I don’t want her to leave.

• After my daughter left high school I tried to find her volunteer work and paid work. It often didn’t work out, and I have no experience in this field. We were grasping at straws. Our facilitator found a support worker for my daughter, a paid work position and a regular volunteer role. There are a whole lot of other families floundering without the support of Independent Facilitation and we will be floundering again without it.

• I am not equipped to ask for things nicely. I have spent too much time fighting to get basic needs for my son met. I know that my son wants Independent Facilitation, so I can help figure out what he wants, not just what I think is best. I want him to dance through life, not just walk. And I don’t have the time as his parent to teach him how to dance. I think a facilitator could find those things to enrich his life.

• We got some support when my son was young, when it ended we were supposed to be discharged into services. We got nothing until now, when he’s an adult. The doors seem to open briefly and let us in, only to be slammed in our face once again. This is the impact if we lose our Independent Facilitator at this point. 

• The officials know that this works, but they have no control over programs and finances. They are not decision-makers. If the cabinet says no to something, they cannot change it and we are too far away from the next election to put on that kind of pressure. What is important is what we are getting now, what is going to be taken away and what will be the impact of that. 

• What it means is that people like me and others won’t have support, we don’t have the money to pay fee-for-service and cover people’s time, gas mileage and insurance to come and support us. I believe this government may make cuts to all kinds of supports and people like me may end up on the streets. I believe this government does not have the interests of the whole Province at heart. Usually if someone has a grievance they can go to their MPP and they will take it forward and get something done about it. But not in this government, they only care about big businesses. I need the help of my facilitator to exist as a productive member of society, to do what I want, to collect what I want, to be who I am. She helps me advocate for more shifts with my employer so that it doesn’t have to be my mom. She gives me advice – on anything. I can use her as a reference to get a new job.

• Independent Facilitation has been essential to my son this past few years, to help him imagine what’s possible for his life. He has a job at Canadian Tire and once a week volunteers at a bike store repairing bikes. We don’t have funding to pay fee-for-service for Independent Facilitation. There seems to be an assumption that families have money for this. A case manager is not going to get to know my son, to help him make decisions. Without facilitation my son will be missing work opportunities, volunteering at the bike shop, help to hire support workers to go to the library together