Ombudsman intervention lifts ABA therapy refund ban

The change followed a complaint by a mother whose request for reimbursement for her daughter’s therapy had been refused under the Therapy Refund Scheme. According to Times of Malta, she went to the Education Commissioner within the Office of the Ombudsman after the CRPD said ABA therapy was unregulated in Malta, lacked established local standards and could pose risks if not delivered appropriately and ethically.

That would be a coherent position if the state had kept its hands off ABA altogether. The complaint said otherwise. The mother argued that ABA-based services were already being funded by government and provided within the state education system, making the refusal to refund private therapy look less like caution than contradiction.

Education Commissioner Vincent De Gaetano took exactly that point. Times of Malta reported that he found it inconsistent for the CRPD to reject privately obtained ABA therapy on safety grounds while public resources were already supporting the same type of therapy in other settings. He said the distinction was potentially discriminatory towards parents who, for valid reasons, needed to seek ABA therapy privately.

His language was unusually direct. The commissioner concluded that the blanket refusal to provide refunds or tax credits for ABA therapy raised serious concerns of maladministration and described the policy as “unreasonable, unjust, improperly discriminatory and wrong in principle”.

The mother’s own circumstances gave the case its force. She said private therapy became the only viable option for her family after she lost confidence in the state-contracted provider following an incident involving her daughter, leaving her to shoulder considerable private treatment costs.

Following the intervention, the CRPD confirmed that the blanket ban had been lifted. It also said applications submitted since the scheme was introduced in 2023 were being reviewed, with eligible pending claims to be refunded once the necessary information is obtained.

That matters beyond one complaint. A policy change is one thing; reopening earlier applications is another. The CRPD also said it would publish a list of ABA therapists whose services qualify under the scheme and assess other therapists at parents’ request, which narrows the dispute from a flat veto to the terms on which reimbursement will now be allowed.