Disability Law Primer (PDF) - ARCH Disability Law Centre

independently. Instead they would be dependent upon informal services provided by
untrained friends or family, or they would be forced to live in nursing homes or other
institutional settings to obtain the support they require.

B. Legislative Framework

Most attendant services are funded through the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care.
The Home Care and Community Services Act, 1994 (prior to 2010, the Long-Term Care
Act, 1994) and its regulations, particularly O-Reg 386/99, outline the scope of services
provided and the rules that apply to the provision of those services. The Direct Funding
program is funded by the Ministry of Health and operates within guidelines established
under the Ministry of Community and Social Services Act, R.S.O. 1990, M 20, 11.1 and
Regulation 367/94.^11

C. Who is Eligible for Attendant Services?

To receive services a person must:

• be insured under the Ontario Health Insurance Plan (OHIP);


• have a permanent physical disability and require physical assistance with
  activities of daily living such as bathing, dressing, transferring and/or
  toileting^12 ; and


• be able to direct their own services.
  Otherwise, the law is not clear about who should get services. In general the CCAC
  decides whether a person gets services after performing its own evaluation.^13

(^11) Although it is unusual for a program to receive funding from one Ministry while regulations are found
under another Ministry’s Act. With Direct Funding, this situation seems to have arisen because at the time
the Direct Funding Program was being developed, Attendant services were in the process of being
transferred from the Ministry of Community and Social Services (MCSS) to the Ministry of Health/Ministry
of Health and Long-Term Care (MHLTC), so while the relevant legislation was drafted in the MCSS Act,
perhaps because the expertise on attendant services remained at the MCSS at the time, the transfer to
MHLTC meant that funding would be provided by that Ministry. 12
See s. 2. (1) and 2.1 of O Reg 386/99; for more detail see CCAC Client Services Policy manual,
Chapter 3; “ Eligibility Criteria for CCAC Services (September 2006); note that these criteria focus largely
on the OHIP requirements for various groups of people.