It wasn’t Jennifer Forsyth’s first choice to move across the country to a place she’d never visited and where she barely knew a soul. But it seemed like the only one.

Her twin sons, Kane and Cyrus, diagnosed with autism just before their second birthday, needed intensive therapy. And because it’s most effective when children are young, they needed it fast.

It had taken months of referrals, paperwork and lineups just to get the boys assessed. Then came worse news: they would have to wait at least two years for provincially-funded treatment in Toronto.

Private therapy, which would cost tens of thousands of dollars a year, was out of the question for Forsyth and her husband Erik, a steelworker in the highrise building industry.

So they opted for a radical solution. Last winter, they packed up their three preschoolers and moved to New Brunswick after Forsyth learned the wait times there would be a couple of months.

A year later, Forsyth, 29, is homesick, but not sorry.

“It was either that or keep waiting in Toronto,” she says over the phone from the family’s rented duplex south of Moncton. “I couldn’t do that, it was too hard.”

Since last May, her 3-year-old sons have each been receiving 20 hours a week of intensive behavioural intervention delivered by two therapists in their home and funded by New Brunswick.

“I have seen a lot of progress, things I never thought I’d see them do,” says Forsyth.

They have gone from flinging their food and cutlery on the floor to spooning yogurt into their mouths by themselves. They are making eye contact more often and starting to recognize letters of the alphabet. The boys are non-verbal but are learning to use communication cards to signal “I want Mommy” or “I want puzzles.”

Last week, Kane had a breakthrough, engaging in a game of catch with his mother, who felt the connection as he looked at her expectantly, waiting for the ball he had thrown to be tossed back.

If the Forsyths had stayed in Toronto, Kane and Cyrus would still be waiting.

But the move has its downside. They have seen a high turnover of therapists, frequent absences due to harsh winter weather and periods when the boys regressed.

Erik spent four months working in Alberta to support the family, returning once a month during seven-day stretches of time off. But he lost his job at year-end, a casualty of plunging oil prices. Work prospects are bleak.

Jennifer picks up minimum-wage jobs when she can to help make ends meet.

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She misses Toronto and worries about the future. Sometimes she feels like giving up. But she doesn’t.

The family has a daily routine that is paying off for the children. And they finally have some hope.

“A few years from now I will be glad I did it, whether or not it’s successful,” says Jennifer. “I just had to know I did the best I could.”

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