Gatekeeping the disability supplement

BC’s redesigned Children and Youth with Support Needs system, announced February 10, 2026, introduces a fundamental architectural flaw that will defund thousands of families currently receiving autism support: mandatory Disability Tax Credit approval to access the BC Children and Youth Disability Supplement, combined with complete absence of infrastructure making that approval accessible.

The Province frames this as streamlined administration—families receive “automatic” supplement payments through Canada Revenue Agency once approved for the federal Disability Tax Credit. What government doesn’t disclose: the timeline families actually experience obtaining approval, the fees practitioners charge to complete applications, the CRA adjudication standards that systematically exclude many disabled children, and the complete funding gaps families navigate while autism funding terminates and DTC processing crawls forward.

This isn’t policy complexity or implementation challenge. This is designed abandonment, relocating gatekeeping from provincial to federal jurisdiction while providing none of the supports that would make federal infrastructure accessible.

How the DTC requirement operates

The BC Children and Youth Disability Supplement provides up to $6,000 annually (income-tested) to families raising disabled children. Eligibility requires two conditions: the child must qualify for the federal Disability Tax Credit, do their taxes, and the family must meet income thresholds.

According to the what is the BC Children and Youth Disability Supplement document, families receive supplement payments “automatically” once they have DTC approval and file taxes. The Guide for Current Service Recipients notes that medical practitioners “may charge fees” to complete DTC forms and that Canada Revenue Agency processing takes “10-15 weeks.”

What these documents omit: the actual timeline from application to payment, the barriers families face accessing practitioners willing to complete forms, the CRA adjudication framework that denies applications for many disabled children whose impairments don’t meet federal “severe and prolonged” standards, and what happens to families during the gap between autism funding termination (April 1, 2027) and eventual supplement payments.

The real timeline

One parent’s experience navigating DTC approval reveals what government’s “10-15 weeks” estimate conceals: six months from application submission to DTC approval, then thirteen additional months for CRA to reassess taxes and begin payments.

This timeline represents a successful application during normal processing conditions, before the system faces surge demand from thousands of families simultaneously applying as autism funding terminates.

For a family currently receiving $22,000 annual autism funding, this creates catastrophic disruption:

March 31, 2027: Autism funding invoicing ends
April 1, 2027: No more autism funding
April–June 2027: Family navigates DTC application (assuming they can access a practitioner, afford any fees, complete documentation)
October 2027: DTC approval arrives (six months)
November 2028: CRA completes tax reassessment and begins supplement payments (thirteen months post-approval)

Total funding gap: twenty months without provincial support. During this period, families must either pay out-of-pocket for therapies, behavioural support, and services their children need, or discontinue services entirely.

For a family previously receiving $22,000 annually, this represents approximately $36,000 in lost support during the gap, even if they ultimately qualify for the supplement maximum of $6,000 annually—a permanent funding reduction of 73% combined with multi-year service disruption.

Who gets excluded: Level 1 and Level 2 autistic children

The DTC barrier disproportionately harms families whose children experience the most school-based violence and institutional denial of support.

Children with Level 3 autism or autism combined with intellectual disability qualify for Direct Admit to the BC Children and Youth Disability Benefit, receiving up to $17,000 annually without requiring DTC approval. These families navigate simpler transition pathways with predictable benefit eligibility.

Children with Level 1 or Level 2 autism without intellectual disability must demonstrate “highest support needs” through Needs-Based Review to access the Benefit. Many won’t qualify. The Guide’s own scenario presents “Ollie,” a highly verbal autistic child with ADHD who “struggles significantly in social interactions and requires intensive social skill development” and needs “modifications at home, school, and in all environments to ensure he remains self-regulated.” Ollie “does not qualify for the BC Children and Youth Disability Benefit” because his needs don’t meet the threshold.

Families like Ollie’s—currently receiving autism funding for children whose support needs the government acknowledges but excludes from direct benefits—must pursue DTC approval to access any provincial support. This creates obscene inequity: the children whose disabilities schools most readily deny accommodation, whose families already fight the hardest advocacy battles, whose distress gets pathologised as behaviour rather than recognised as disability-related, now face the highest administrative barriers to maintaining funding.

Level 1 and Level 2 autistic children are precisely the children most likely to experience room clears, partial schedules disguised as accommodation, “safety plans” that punish distress, and IEP goals demanding they suppress autistic traits. These are the children whose families already carry documentation of exclusionary practices, attendance gaps from partial schedules, and cumulative trauma from watching their children harmed by institutions claiming to serve them.

And now the Province designs a funding transition that requires these families—already exhausted from advocacy, already fighting hostile school systems—to navigate additional gatekeeping, obtain clinical attestations, pursue federal tax credit approval, and maintain services through multi-year funding gaps.

The barriers families face obtaining DTC approval

Practitioner access and fees: Medical practitioners must complete DTC forms certifying that the child has a “severe and prolonged impairment.” Many practitioners charge fees for this administrative work—fees the Guide acknowledges but the Province doesn’t fund or reimburse. Families in rural or remote communities may struggle to access practitioners familiar with their children’s disabilities. Families whose children see specialists with months-long waitlists cannot simply book appointments for paperwork completion.
CRA adjudication standards: The Disability Tax Credit requires demonstrating “severe and prolonged” functional impairment under specific federal criteria. Many Level 1 and Level 2 autistic children whose support needs provincial systems acknowledge may not meet CRA’s adjudication threshold. If applications get denied, families face appeals, additional documentation requirements, and extended timelines—or complete exclusion from the Supplement despite their children’s demonstrated disabilities.
Processing capacity and surge demand: The Province’s “10-15 weeks” processing estimate assumes normal application volume. When thousands of families simultaneously apply as autism funding terminates, processing times will extend dramatically. Has MCFD coordinated with CRA about capacity to handle surge demand? Do expedited processing pathways exist for families facing service disruption? The policy documents provide no answers.
Tax filing requirements: Families must be current on tax returns to receive CRA-administered benefits. Families managing disabled children’s care needs, advocacy labour, and financial strain may have fallen behind on tax obligations. The Province provides no tax filing support, no assistance getting families current, no acknowledgment that this requirement creates additional barriers.
Timing and aging out: Children currently receiving autism funding who are 16-18 years old may age out of eligibility before DTC processing completes and supplement payments begin. A seventeen-year-old in April 2027 could receive DTC approval in late 2027, wait thirteen months for tax reassessment, and receive first supplement payment in late 2028—after aging out of most support systems. All the advocacy labour pursuing DTC approval results in payments arriving after the child left the system.

What the Province could have done: supports that don’t exist

If the Province genuinely wanted to reduce administrative burden while expanding access through the DTC pathway, implementation would include infrastructure making that pathway accessible. None of the following appears in policy documentation:

Funded DTC navigation: Dedicated staff helping families understand eligibility criteria, gather required documentation, complete applications, and track processing status. Some community organisations provide limited DTC support, but no MCFD commitment to fund provincewide capacity expansion exists.
Free medical appointments for DTC completion: Accessible clinical consultations specifically for DTC form completion, recognising that many families’ existing care providers either charge substantial fees or have waitlists making timely completion impossible. The Province could contract with clinicians, establish telehealth pathways, or reimburse families for completion costs.
Tax filing assistance: Dedicated tax clinics helping families behind on returns get current so they can access CRA-delivered benefits. Community organisations provide this in limited capacity, but no provincial commitment to expand access appears.
CRA liaison and expedited processing: MCFD could negotiate with CRA for dedicated processing streams for families transitioning from autism funding, establish provincial liaison roles to track applications and escalate delays, or create bridge funding mechanisms so families don’t lose supports during processing gaps.
Bridge funding during processing: Presumptive eligibility allowing families currently receiving autism funding to continue at current levels until DTC processing completes. Advance payments against anticipated approval. Low-interest loans covering gap periods, repayable from future supplement payments. Any mechanism preventing families from choosing between privately funding services for two years or watching their children’s supports discontinue.
Transparent timeline communication: Honest acknowledgment that thousands of simultaneous DTC applications will create processing backlogs extending far beyond the ten-to-fifteen week estimate, with clear communication about bridge supports during gaps and realistic expectations about when families might actually receive supplement payments.

The Province implemented none of these supports while terminating autism funding and tying supplement eligibility to DTC approval.

The data government won’t disclose

The complete absence of impact analysis in the February announcement reveals the Province either didn’t assess how many families would be harmed or assessed it and chose not to disclose findings that would expose the scale of disruption.

Basic transparency would require publishing:

Current DTC approval rates among autism funding recipients: How many families currently receiving autism funding already have DTC approval? If twenty percent have DTC, the Province designed a system that will defund thousands of families for years during processing. Government possesses this data or could obtain it through simple cross-referencing. They chose not to publish it.
DTC approval rates by autism level and age: What percentage of Level 1 versus Level 2 versus Level 3 autistic children qualify for DTC under current CRA adjudication standards? If Level 3 children get approved at ninety percent rates while Level 1 children get approved at thirty percent rates, the supplement isn’t a broad support mechanism—it’s a filtering system that compounds the Direct Admit advantage Level 3 families already receive.
Projected application surge and processing capacity: If sixteen thousand children per year receive autism diagnoses in BC and current autism funding serves approximately thirteen to fifteen thousand children at any given time, how many families will apply for DTC in 2026–2027? What will this do to processing timelines? Has MCFD coordinated with CRA about capacity?
Age distribution approaching transition out: How many children currently receiving autism funding will turn eighteen or nineteen between April 2027 and when they could realistically receive supplement payments (assuming six-month DTC processing plus thirteen-month tax reassessment)? These families face complete defunding with no possibility of accessing replacement supports because their children age out before payments arrive.

If this data showed minimal impact—if eighty-five percent of current recipients already had DTC approval, if processing times averaged eight to twelve weeks, if only three percent of families faced funding gaps exceeding six months—government would have prominently featured these findings in the announcement. The absence of any quantified impact assessment reveals the analysis either doesn’t exist or shows results the Province chose not to disclose.

What stakeholders actually asked for

Across the stakeholder engagement reports published during the 2023–2024 consultation window, not one organisation requested increased medical gatekeeping, DTC-dependent benefits, or requirements forcing existing service recipients to obtain new clinical documentation to maintain their supports.

The Family Support Institute Family Voices Project Report documented families’ “repeated” expression of their “desire” to “maintain and improve the current individualised funding for Autism.” The Community-Led Collaboration Project Engagement Report recorded families describing “emotional, financial, and logistical strain” navigating complex systems and explicitly demanded: “Information must be clear. Simplify paperwork. Invest in IT. Introduce navigation.”

Even the Down Syndrome Resource Foundation, taking the most diagnosis-centred approach, explicitly stated funding should continue “across the lifespan” and “not be discontinued for any reason other than if a family decides they no longer need it”—the polar opposite of a system requiring families already receiving supports to navigate reassessment processes and federal gatekeeping to maintain continuity.

Stakeholders called for reduced barriers, not new ones. The Province responded by designing a system that shifts administrative burden from MCFD to families and CRA, provides no infrastructure making federal gatekeeping accessible, then claims this reduces complexity because payments become “automatic” for families who successfully navigate the apparatus.

This is austerity logic disguised as equity expansion

The DTC requirement serves cost containment, not family support. By tying provincial benefits to federal infrastructure without funding transition supports, the Province:

Reduces provincial administrative costs by eliminating MCFD-managed eligibility determination and offloading processing to CRA.
Creates filtering mechanisms that exclude families who cannot afford practitioners’ fees, cannot access assessors, cannot wait through multi-year processing, or whose children don’t meet federal adjudication standards despite provincial acknowledgment of support needs.
Deflects responsibility when families lose access—CRA denied the application, practitioners charge fees the Province doesn’t control, processing takes time—obscuring that the Province created these barriers by tying benefits to federal infrastructure without providing navigation support.
Engineers attrition through administrative exhaustion: families who can privately fund services for two years while DTC processes will maintain supports; families who cannot will discontinue services, potentially abandon applications, and drop out of the system government claims expands access.

Then the Province can point to uptake numbers showing fewer families accessing the supplement than projected, using this as evidence that anticipated demand was overstated rather than acknowledgment that barriers prevented access.

What families need now

Immediate actions:

Apply for DTC now if your child doesn’t have approval. Don’t wait for autism funding to end. Begin the process immediately, recognising it may take six months to approval and thirteen additional months to payments.
Document everything: current funding amounts, current services and their outcomes, DTC application dates and processing status, practitioner fees paid, service disruptions experienced during funding gaps, and any denials or barriers encountered.
Seek DTC application support: Contact Disability Alliance BC, autism advocacy organisations, or community legal clinics that may provide DTC navigation assistance.
Get current on tax returns: If you’re behind on filing, access tax clinic support now so CRA processing delays don’t compound when DTC approval arrives.
Connect with other families: Share experiences, document patterns, build collective evidence of systemic barriers and harm. Individual families face these obstacles alone; collective documentation reveals designed exclusion.

Advocacy demands:

Demand impact data: How many current autism funding recipients have DTC approval? What are projected approval rates by autism level? How many children will age out during processing? Government has this data or can obtain it. They must disclose it.
Demand funded supports: DTC navigation infrastructure, free medical appointments for form completion, tax filing assistance, CRA liaison roles, expedited processing for families transitioning off autism funding, and transparent timeline communication acknowledging actual processing realities.
Demand bridge funding: Presumptive eligibility, advance payments, gap loans, service continuation vouchers, or any mechanism preventing families from choosing between privately funding their children’s supports for two years or discontinuing services during processing.
Demand accountability: Published metrics on DTC application volumes, processing times, approval rates, denial reasons, and supplement uptake. Regular reporting showing whether “thousands more children” actually access support or whether barriers prevent realisation of claimed expansion.
Consider human rights complaints: If your family loses funding due to DTC denial despite your child’s documented support needs, if processing delays create multi-year service gaps, if you cannot afford practitioner fees or access assessors, document this as potential discrimination. The BC Human Rights Tribunal hears complaints about denial of services customarily available to the public based on disability.

The Province designed this harm

Government workers sat in stakeholder sessions, recorded families’ exhaustion navigating systems, documented explicit requests to maintain autism funding and reduce administrative burden, then designed a system that terminates supports, multiplies gatekeeping points, and provides no infrastructure making replacement benefits accessible.

This isn’t implementation oversight or competing priorities or difficult trade-offs. This is choosing to harm families, documenting their resistance to that harm through consultation processes, implementing it anyway, then claiming it represents listening.

The DTC requirement doesn’t streamline access. It engineers exclusion through administrative attrition while appearing to expand support. Families pursuing federal tax credit approval navigate practitioner fees, CRA adjudication, multi-year processing, and tax filing requirements without provincial assistance, then government points to barriers it created and claims families “chose” not to access available benefits.

A lot of children will age out before their families can even obtain DTC approval. A lot of families will discontinue therapies they cannot privately fund through multi-year gaps. A lot of Level 1 and Level 2 autistic children—the ones experiencing the most school-based violence, whose families already fight the hardest battles for recognition and support—will lose funding while Level 3 children receive Direct Admit pathways with reduced documentation burden.

And the Province had the data to know this would happen, or could have obtained it through basic impact analysis. They chose not to assess harm or assessed it and chose not to disclose. Both choices reveal the same truth: government prioritised cost containment over family wellbeing, then called it equity.

The Disability Tax Credit isn’t a bridge to broader support. It’s a trapdoor designed to look like a pathway while families fall through gaps government engineered.

Fund BC Education documents systematic exclusion of disabled students across BC school districts and advocates for adequately resourced, genuinely inclusive public education. The CYSN redesign’s DTC requirement compounds school-based harm by defunding the exact families whose children experience the most institutional violence and whose advocacy labour already exceeds sustainable levels.