Community Living Ontario

Delegation engages deputy minister in positive dialogue
Wednesday August 11, 2010 -- Lisa Bailey

Community Living Ontario’s education committee is moving towards setting priorities for advancing the association’s inclusive education mandate.

The committee has been meeting every six to eight weeks since January, laying out a framework of issues. At a full-day session in September, members hope to follow a more open agenda with a broad discussion of the issues and move into strategic planning.

Salvatore Amenta, who co-chairs the committee with fellow retired teacher and Community Living Ontario regional director Helene Morin-Chain, hopes the face-to-face meeting will lead to “decisive conclusions on direction and methodology.”

Amenta notes that the complexities of the education system present challenges for the committee as they develop a working plan to tackle issues.

For example, should they divide into subgroups to focus on levels of education from elementary to post-secondary, or should they concentrate as a whole on one area they deem to be the most critical.

Gordon Kyle, director of policy and government relations, is one of four senior Community Living Ontario staff working as supports to the committee.

He says he’s hoping for “some good consensus” from the group in narrowing down issues and determining where and how to apply resources for the most effective result.

Comprised of about a dozen members representing diverse perspectives from parents to executive directors of local associations, the committee consolidates the ongoing work in education of Community Living Ontario’s community development, government relations, and communications departments.

Kyle says the group becomes the “central steering mechanism” for this work, helping to co-ordinate it and ensuring the association is strategic in advocating for inclusive education.

In recent months, committee members have been part of a delegation that met with Ontario’s deputy education minister.

Joining the delegation at one meeting was Gordon Porter, the Canadian Association for Community Living’s inclusive education national director who was instrumental in establishing New Brunswick’s inclusive education system.

Both Amenta and Kyle are optimistic about this dialogue, noting the deputy minister previously served as deputy community and social services minister and is knowledgeable about inclusion.

Hoping to build another “excellent relationship” with this minister, Kyle says he “appears very open to working with us.”

Moving forward, Kyle says, another key focus to changing policy and practice is engaging parents of children who have an intellectual disability and are moving through school system.

Bringing parents together and raising their voice around the concerns and issues of education has been a focus of recent community development work at Community Living Ontario.

“All the noise in the world we can make as Community Living Ontario voices to governments and educators is probably not going to be effective if we can’t work with families who say, ‘These are the things my son and daughter need,’” Kyle says.

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