Attendant Care is the most basic level of care for seriously injured people with brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, serious orthopaedic injuries and/or amputations. It allows for a Personal Support Worker to assist with personal care, safety, supervision, meal preparation, hygiene, other therapies, and more.
The Form 1 assessment is a tool which was originally intended to calculate a monetary amount for which those injured could use to a hire a Personal Support Worker.
The amount would be calculated using the amount of time required each month for a type of support multiplied by the Form 1 hourly rate for that type of support (eg. $14.00. $14.90 and $21.11). These rates have not been updated in decades and are well below minimum wage.
In the wake of the Malitskiy v. Unica decision, certain insurers have introduced blanket policies that limit payments for Attendant Care based on these outdated hourly rates. Consumers are expected to pay for remaining amounts in order to receive services.
Most individuals are unable to pay for the unpaid portion of these services and therefore go without receiving this vital support. This seems like an unfair opportunity for these insurers to unofficially deny paying for a pre-paid, mandatory auto insurance benefit.
This has left many severely injured individuals without crucial support.
In the course of our discussions with the FRSA, we have been advised to write to our MPPs and request that the Form 1 rates be increased to reflect the current market rates. We have created a letter template to share in hopes of encouraging concerned parties to contact their MPPs.
We encourage you to join us in this cause by downloading our letter template, personalizing it (if you wish) and mailing or emailing it to your MPPs office.
A copy of our letter template can be found here:
Contact information for your MPP can be found here:
MPP contact information | Legislative Assembly of Ontario (ola.org).