A court in Canada has ruled that the government's refusal to provide expensive therapy for all autistic children older than five is not age discrimination.
The Ontario Court of Appeal ruling was issued following a lower court's ruling in favour of parents forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for treatment.
That original ruling by the Ontario Superior Court found the cut-off to be discriminatory on the basis of age, and therefore a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The government began funding a specialized autism therapy known either as intensive behavioural intervention (IBI) or applied behavioural analysis (ABA), which is based on the theory that autistic children can improve their behaviour through repetitive actions.
The funding applied to autistic kids aged two to five in 2000 and ceased when the children turned six.
The therapy ranges from $30,000 to $80,000 per year per child, depending on the number of hours of treatment needed each week.
The government's appeal stated that the intensive one-on-one process works best for children under the age of six, and that other forms of treatment work better for older children.
The Court of Appeal agreed and said the exclusion of older autistic children because of their age from a program so particularly designed to assist another disadvantaged group does not deny their human dignity or devalue their worth as members of Canadian society, and also ruled the children were not discriminated against because of their disability.
However some parents are already preparing to continue their four year legal battle which involves some 28 families.