Saying he disagreed, the minister responsible for Social Services, Lionel Carmant, asked his deputy minister to intervene following a report from Duty in which parents with children with intellectual disabilities denounced the fact that their rehabilitation center in Montreal removed services from them for administrative reasons.
“I don’t agree at all, but these are things that happened because the system worked like that at the time,” said Lionel Carmant, when questioned on Wednesday on the subject by The duty. I asked the Deputy Minister to intervene because I am a former pediatric neurologist, and it is clear that this is a situation [la déficience intellectuelle] which lasts throughout life. Services must be offered throughout life.”
Young people with sustained and significant needs, and who benefited from the help of the Rehabilitation Center for Intellectual Disabilities and Pervasive Developmental Disorders (CRDITED) in Montreal, now no longer have access to these services. The integrated university health and social services center (CIUSSS) of South-Central Montreal, for its part, responded in our pages that it is not a question of closing files for life, but that “the objective is to make people autonomous” and that “they must not be dependent on us for life”. A break is sometimes necessary, it was added, to “help the next person on the waiting list”.
Minister Carmant explained that, with the 2015 reform, the CIUSSS du Centre-Sud-de-l’Île-de-Montréal became a regional center for all the specialized services on the island. “Everyone with more severe needs was referred there. So the workers, to take care of these patients from all over the island, had to close files to take on new patients, he explained. But we are changing that.”
Asked if the trend in the network was towards “coaching” for parents, which transforms families into specialized workers, criticizing organizations, the minister replied: “No”. “We are going to the local service. So, the pivotal worker, the pivotal professional, comes to seek out specialized needs in the rehabilitation centers. But all of that is integrated and maintained with the local worker,” he said.
Inhumane, says the opposition
The opposition political parties in Quebec, for their part, unanimously denounced an “inhumane” system.
“This decision of the CIUSSS […] should be revised,” said Ruba Ghazal, MP for Mercier for Québec solidaire, describing the system as “Kafkaesque”. “We cannot leave parents like that, alone, in this situation, for administrative reasons. There needs to be more humanity. »
For its part, the Parti Québécois described the report as Duty of “absolutely disturbing”. “I don’t see how we can tolerate, in 2023 in Quebec, an approach like that. A kind of assembly line work where we say: ‘We did what we could, we didn’t do much, and on to the next one, manage, good luck'”, reacted Joël Arseneau, PQ MP for the Îles-de-la-Madeleine.
The member for Acadia for the Liberal Party of Quebec, André Albert Morin, spoke of a “totally inhumane” situation. “The Ministry of Health must be able to accompany and support these families. It’s essential. And the fact of wanting to stop, or of not providing adequate support, I tell you, it doesn’t make sense,” he said.
With Marie-Michèle Sioui and Alexandre Robillard