Respite Care for Autistic Children in BC: What It Is, and What We Are Building

Respite is care for your child so that you can stop being on duty for a few hours. That is the whole idea. It is not therapy, it is not a lesson, and it does not depend on your child making progress at anything — it exists because caregiving at this intensity is not sustainable without breaks.

Families raising autistic children often go years without one.

What a respite shift actually covers

Someone competent taking over so that you can leave, or stay and do nothing.

In practice that means keeping your child safe and occupied **on their own terms** — their routine, their preferred activities, their food, their regulation strategies. Not a programme somebody brought with them. If your child needs a specific order of events after school, respite means following that order rather than negotiating it.

What you do with the hours is nobody's business. Sleep, work, a hospital appointment, unhurried time with a sibling who has been waiting their turn, a meal eaten sitting down.

What it is not

It is not therapy, and it should not be sold as therapy with a different name. Nobody is working through a plan or collecting data on goals during a respite shift.

It is also not a reward for a good week or something to be earned. It is maintenance for the adults, and it works best booked before you are desperate rather than after.

Who it is for

Parents and guardians whose child needs more supervision than is typical for their age, and for whom the ordinary options do not fit — a babysitter who cannot tell a meltdown from misbehaviour, a relative who finds it hard, or a waitlist measured in months.

Indirectly it is for siblings too. A brother or sister who gets two uninterrupted hours with a parent is getting something real.

What it costs

$42 per hour.

How MCFD Autism Funding fits

Puffin Services' respite care for autistic children is being designed to accept eligible MCFD Autism Funding. Whether your funding can be applied depends on your child's plan and the current funding rules, so the practical step is to confirm with your funding contact rather than assume either way.

If you need respite now

This is the part that matters most, so it is plain.

**Respite is not bookable online yet.** The booking flow that covers childcare and senior care does not cover it. But the service does not have to wait for the software:

That is a real option available today, arranged by a person. If we can help, we will say so. If we cannot help yet, we will tell you that plainly rather than leaving you on a list wondering.

What we are building

Respite sits alongside the rest of Puffin's pediatric programme — BI, SLPA and OTA support delivered in the home — and like the rest of it, the online booking is in development rather than live.

Two things about who turns up. Respite is being staffed by **BI-trained specialists** — people trained in behaviour intervention, working here as respite rather than running a therapy programme. In practice that is the difference between someone who reads a meltdown as dysregulation and someone who reads it as misbehaviour. And every Puffin caregiver completes a provincial CRRP vulnerable-sector check before any placement; respite is no exception.

If you would like to be told the moment respite opens for online booking, register your interest.