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Toronto— Front line counsellors who provide quality services for people with developmental disabilities and who have been shut out of a special Association for Community Living Day this week, will hold a media conference tomorrow, Wednesday, June 19, 2002 at 10:30 a.m., the Queen’s Park media studio. They will outline a vision for improving developmental services province-wide.

Tomorrow (June 20), people with developmental disabilities, their families and management from Ontario agencies that provide support, will mark Association for Community Living Day with special events at Queen’s Park, but “those of us who work with people with developmental disabilities and their families have not be asked to participate in the special day.

Essentially our work and contribution to ensuring people with developmental disabilities get the support and services they need is being ignored,” says Fred Hahn, a residential counsellor with Toronto Association for Community Living.

Hahn will be joined at the media conference by Sid Ryan, the Ontario president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), the union that represent the majority of Association for Community Living (ACL) workers province-wide and other front line staff who work with the developmentally disabled.

There is chronic under-funding for these support services and the result is huge systemic problems. Workers in the system have solutions to improve the delivery of services and this government should be listening to them,” says Ryan.

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For more information please contact:
Sid Ryan, President CUPE Ontario
(416) 209-0066
Fred Hahn, CUPE Local 2191
(416) 456-9116
Stella Yeadon, CUPE Communications
(416) 578-8774