I have had several children in care with special needs and in all cases the "professionals" pushed for the kids to be moved to a daycare centre at least by January of the year they would start school in September. The idea was that they could bring in people to do assessments and determine what help the child would need and then make arrangements to have that available to the child as they started school. If they were in a licensed agency daycare some of the professionals can go to the home to perform services such as speech, OT/PT but not to unlicensed homes - ministry rules.

Moving to a centre allows the services to observe the child in a group and rule out things like experience, observe behviours and then work with teachers to establish learning guidelines.

I agree that they will get faster service if they go the private therapy route. The downside is once the child is actually in school they will go to the bottom of the assessment list and it could be a couple school years before the child is diagnosed for services. Starting them in preschool when the wait list is shorter and more money is pumped into the systems means that the reports follow the child into school. My belief is that since a child does need to legally start school till age 6, the preschool program would be able to accommodate him and receive funding.