Simcoe/Dufferin Ballroom

This campfire session shares Maltby’s journey from a ministry funded program to one that is transitioned and primed for a fee for service environment.    

Across Ontario, autism services have gone through many changes over the last few years requiring providers to plan and pivot, while providing and growing core clinical and foundational family services.  One long standing issue the Maltby Centre is attempting to mitigate is the length of time families wait for services, specifically behaviour services.

Maltby Centre started by listening to families and staff. Information from these sessions formed the cornerstones of new ways of alerting and intaking families more quickly into behaviour services.  To build out the foundation from these cornerstones, an interdisciplinary team reviewed, reflected, and rebuilt service processes to be family-centered, intuitive, and aligned with the needs of the community. Interviews, environmental scans, and creating multiple options were key to selecting and developing a flexible base model to pilot, scale up, and build upon.

Outcomes include redefining and streamlining how the waitlist is used, communicating in family friendly language, using technology to spread service availabilities faster, re-thinking treatment blocks, pricing and how we communicate—enhancing planning for families and clinicians. Early results indicate quicker responses times from families, identifying of families with funds faster, increased support from staff, and more predictable forecasting of when to intake the more families into behaviour services in groups and 1:1. 

3 Key Takeaways
1. Redefine and streamline “waitlist”
2. Flexible Service with predictable parameters 
3. Ideating possibilities 
 

Jonathan Pehleman, Program Manager, Maltby Centre