Ages and stages

Earlier this month, the provincial government announced it would be shutting down its seven-year, early behavioural intervention program for autistic children effective April 1, 2010. But wouldn't it have been more compassionate and politically palpable if the government had let the children who are already in that program age out of it first? "That's what some of the parents have also put forward - to grandfather the kids out and at least finish what's been started with this group of kids," acknowledged Victoria Society for Children with Autism co-director Laurel Duruisseau. But the government, according to Ms. Duruisseau, hasn't been receptive to that suggestion.