One of the first things Deny Soto was told after her son was diagnosed with autism was “get on the list.”

The Toronto mom didn’t really know what she was signing up for in 2022, but she listened. Now, four years later, her nine-year-old son Nico Tsirigotis is still on that list waiting for government funding for core autism services. Those services can include occupational therapy or applied behaviour analysis.

“It’s just sad, because that was a critical part of his development,” said Soto. 

“We lost any support that we could have gotten during that time. So we’ve navigated it on our own, we found alternatives … but I won’t know what we’ve missed.”

Nico is one of more than 67,500 children with autism across the province waiting to access funding for core clinical services through the Ontario Autism Program, according to government records obtained through a freedom of information (FOI) request.