Autism fight goes to Queen’s Park

Parents of children with autism are calling on the government for more support in the classroom. In August, we brought you the story of a Burlington family who is fighting for their son’s right to bring his autism service dog to class. Today they took that fight to Queen’s Park.

10 year old Darius Hamlet has autism and relies on his dog Idyll. Idyll is an autism service dog trained by the Lions foundation. His mother, Briana says he needs Idyll to help with his anxiety in the classroom. But as she first told us back in August, Darius isn’t allowed to bring Idyll to his Burlington school because the Halton Catholic school board doesn’t recognize him as a service dog.

So Briana and other parents took their fight to Queen’s Park hoping to get the Ontario government to understand the challenges of raising a child with autism. They’re calling for better training and support services which includes allowing service animals in all classrooms. Right now it’s up to individual school boards to allow or deny access.

Briana and Darius have collected 500 signatures so far in support of a bill to allow service animals into classrooms. Briana says today was a good start but more needs to be done to help these students with special needs. She learned this week that the school board will allow Idyll to do a second trial in Darius’ classroom sometime in January.