Her savings are gone.

And, unless she's reimbursed soon, her daughter's support worker and day program will be, too.

Kim Bradley said the Passport program, which helps cover the cost of services for individuals with developmental disabilities, failed to repay her claims last month — a delay the province blames on a backlog of submissions.

It owed her nearly $3,000.

As a consequence, Bradley — who lives in east Hamilton with her husband and 25-year-old Alexandra, who has a genetic disorder known as Pallister-Killian syndrome — has had to scramble to cover her daughter's costs and household expenses, such as property taxes and a broken-down car.

Without Passport funding, there isn't enough money for both.

"I used every spare dime I had trying to keep my support worker at least a couple of days a week," Bradley said.

In the Hamilton and Niagara areas, more than 4,500 families and their service providers receive support from the Passport program, which is funded by the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services.

Since the dollars are self-directed, families decide what services best meet their individual needs — anything from programs that promote independence and social and life skills to caregiver respite — and pay for them out of pocket or through a broker. Then, they submit expense claims. Within a few days their money — up to $35,000 annually — is reimbursed.

At least that's how it's supposed to go.

Susanne Craig is the director of the Adult Community Support Program, which provides community-based programing, life-skills classes and recreational activities for individuals with developmental disabilities in the Hamilton area. It serves 60 families, including the Bradleys. Craig brokers services for many of them.

According to Craig, claims used to be submitted to the local Passport program, which is operated by Contact Hamilton and would issue reimbursements directly to families and brokers. Then last August, the payment process was overhauled and transferred to Toronto, where a single agency is now responsible for processing expenses for Passport recipients across Ontario.

"It was supposed to be a more efficient process," she said, and recipients were initially being reimbursed within a week or two. Then, around mid-March — a couple weeks before the end of the program's fiscal year — she said the payments just stopped.

"Things have went haywire over the last six weeks," Craig said. "These submissions have been sent to Passport and no one is getting paid, so workers are quitting, families have used their savings accounts and depleted everything."

So has she.

Craig, who has a dozen staff members and works with between 75 and 100 contract employees, said she has more than $89,000 in outstanding claims from the two-week period between March 27 and April 12. That's on top of more than $18,000 she's owed in program fees, which cover things like rent and payroll — expenses she has recently been forced to pay out of pocket.

Like Bradley, she said she has torn through her personal savings and will have to put her program on hold as of Monday if she isn't reimbursed before the end of the week.

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"I cannot expect my staff to go unpaid," she said.

Bradley — who, along with Craig, was notified by Passport that a portion of her claims had been processed following inquiries from The Spectator on Tuesday afternoon — said it's upsetting, because there is already a shortage of programs in the Hamilton area. She also said she's not surprised.

"She can't keep things going with no money," she added.

In an emailed statement, the ministry said it is aware of the delays and attributed the problem to "a higher than anticipated volume of client invoices that were submitted at year-end."

It also said extra staff have been working to process claims, and that the ministry is working to introduce unspecified additional measures to reduce the number of invoices requiring additional review. "Once implemented, we expect the measures to have an immediate impact on processing times," the ministry added.

The agency responsible for reimbursing Passport expenses, Family Service Toronto, did not respond to requests for comment.

Though it's unclear exactly how many people are waiting to be reimbursed as a result of the backlog, the problem does appear to be widespread at a local level. Over the past month or so, Contact Hamilton has received more than 100 calls and emails daily from people asking about the status of their claims, said executive director Lea Pollard.

"We are very concerned about the impacts the delays are having on people, their families and support providers," she added in an email.

tpecoskie@thespec.com

905-526-3368 | @TeriatTheSpec