A child hurt before birth has just secured funding for a bigger family apartment, though not for counselling, an Ontario tribunal ruled.

His mother was 28 weeks pregnant when the car accident occurred in 2017. The crash left him with a grade III intracranial hemorrhage and hydrocephalus before birth, and he was delivered by emergency caesarean section. He was later diagnosed with global developmental delay and autism spectrum disorder, and is now eight years old.

Through his father as litigation guardian, the child sought two benefits from The Dominion of Canada General Insurance Company under Ontario's no-fault benefits scheme. One plan asked for $8,505 for family and social work counselling. The other sought a rent top-up of $1,900 a month for a year, enough to move the family from a two-bedroom into a three-bedroom apartment.

Adjudicator Sarah Guergis approved the rent claim, finding the child's catastrophic injuries meant he needed his own room for therapy and quiet time, a need that fits within the benefits schedule's housing-related expenses. The family had been living in a two-bedroom apartment, where the child shared a bedroom with his grandparents and a mattress with one of them. Therapists had struggled to work effectively in the cramped space, and his speech-language therapist had already relocated sessions to a public library for lack of room at home. A case manager had also recommended the move so the child could keep his own room for schoolwork as he grows, while staying in the same neighbourhood and school.

The father told the tribunal he had fallen behind on rent while managing his son's care alongside his wife's hospitalization from the same accident. Guergis found that hardship was a factor worth noting but not central to whether the rent top-up was reasonable and necessary.

The counselling claim ran into trouble. Guergis agreed the family needed help managing the child's behavioural challenges, including aggression toward a sibling and a lack of safety awareness outside the home. But the plan lacked key details. It did not explain why 18 sessions were proposed, which family members would take part, or why the assigned social worker was suited to working with a young autistic child. It also charged separately for a therapist's travel time and mileage, which Guergis found duplicated the same cost.

Guergis ordered interest on the rent supplementation but declined to grant a special award, finding no evidence Dominion had unreasonably withheld or delayed payment on either plan.

The rent supplementation runs for 12 months, after which the family and Dominion can revisit whether the arrangement is still needed.