Ontario's disability support program castigated by disabled women. (Health).

TORONTO -- Ontario's Disability Support Program is "ineffective, inefficient and wasteful" says a recently released report from the DisAbled Women's Network Ontario.

The report, Denial by Design. (Link to the report on website: communityaction.ca) The Ontario Disability Support Program, which was researched and written by John Fraser, Cynthia Wilkey and JoAnne Frenschkowksi, says that the waste and inefficiency caused by the application and adjudication process "is eating up all of the public resources in its path."

Concentrating on the "front end" procedural issues of the ODSP from the point of application to denial and appeal, the report is a detailed listing of barriers faced by people with disabilities who try to access the program's funds and benefits.

Proclaimed in 1998, the Ontario Disability Support Program Act, was characterized as the "start of a new era of fairer treatment and more opportunity" for people with disabilities. However, the report says that the "reality has been very different" because although the financial and employment supports associated with the program surpass those found in Ontario's welfare system, "large numbers of disabled people are simply unable to access them."

The report also asserts that the overall costs of the complicated and inaccessible process--a "process seemingly designed to ensure failure"--is "enormous" to the province, to community organizations and for the individuals trying to access the system.

Since 2001, disability-related cases for the provincially-funded legal aid clinics increased to one third from 14 per cent in 1997, the year before the new act was proclaimed. This, in turn, represents "the single largest area of clinic law practice" and costs almost $1 million for only medical expenses associated with the ODSP applications for the fiscal year 2001-02. The other costs associated with disability-related cases are "difficult to precisely determine", but the report stresses that "it is certainly in the tens of millions of dollars every year."

Stating that a new income security system "that truly meets the needs of Ontarians" is needed, the report, nevertheless, outlines 10 key recommendations that would in the short run help make the application and appeal process more accessible.

Among those recommendations are a change to the Intake Screening Unit so that applicants may by-pass the current telephone only system and "have their application taken in person by ODSP staff"; making the Disability Adjudication Unit's process more transparent and accountable; simplify forms for reviews of medical status so that they are geared to determine "whether there has been an improvement in medical conditions, not a complete reassessmeat of them."