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TORONTO — Premier Kathleen Wynne has told a Liberal backbencher to apologize for calling the police on the mother of an autistic child who had threatened a protest at his constituency office.

Wynne will meet later today with MPP Bob Delaney, but says she told him on the phone to apologize to Melanie Palaypayon.

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Palaypayon is one of many parents upset about changes to eligibility rules for Intensive Behavioural Intervention for their autistic children.

Wynne says constituency office staff can be intimidated by protesters, but insists people have a right to speak out against the funding changes, which will deny IBI therapy to children older then 5.

The government has decided instead to transition those children to “enhanced” Applied Behavioural Analysis treatment.

Parents whose children had been for years on the wait list are fuming that they no longer qualify for government-funded IBI therapy.

The newly announced Ontario Autism Program will integrate IBI and ABA therapies, currently in two separate streams, into a flexible service the government is calling enhanced ABA.

In the meantime, 835 children who are older than four have been removed from the IBI wait list and the government is giving their parents $8,000 to pay for private treatment.

Parents say that will only pay for, at most, a few months of intensive therapy.

More than 1,300 kids over four who were already receiving IBI will be transitioned to the new enhanced ABA after their next six-month assessment.