POPARD
POPARD (the Provincial Outreach Program for Autism and Related Disorders) is a publicly funded service in British Columbia, created to support schools in working with autistic students. Despite branding that gestures toward inclusion, POPARD’s leadership continues to sanction ABA-based strategies—including token economies, behaviour charts, and compliance tracking—even when families explicitly withdraw consent. This tag collects documentation and analysis of POPARD’s practices, and explores the systemic harm caused when behavioural control is prioritised over dignity, autonomy, and trauma-informed support.
-
The bait and switch: What inclusion really looks like at the VSB
Every September, I walk into school meetings with the same cautious hope. We’ve done everything right. The diagnoses are up to date. The IEP is in place. The reports are filed — more than thirty of them over the years, from audiologists, psychiatrists, speech-language pathologists, behaviour consultants, and occupational therapists. You’d think that would mean…
-
Rot at the root: Why POPARD must be dismantled from the top down
When I first objected to the strategies POPARD proposed, I tried—truly—to assume good intent: that if I just gave them the right information, the clearest language, the most generous interpretation of their mandate, they would course-correct and stop pushing reward charts onto an already-traumatised child. I wrote careful emails, cited the psychologist’s diagnosis, offered specific…
-
Shut it down: Why POPARD cannot be trusted to support neurodivergent children
We asked for help.We got a behaviour chart. We invited experts into our child’s life, hoping they would help school staff understand his anxiety, his trauma responses, his fiercely sensitive nervous system. We asked for relational strategies grounded in respect and attunement. We shared research. We named his diagnosis. We explained, in plain terms, what…
