PRINCE, Michael J <br/><br/>
The governance of children with disabilities and their families :  charting the public-sector regime in Canada 

 -  2002 
<br/><br/> This article discusses governance and accountability structures that relate to the contemporary agenda of inclusion for children with disabilities in Canada. Who are the major public-sector actors in policies for children with disabilities and their families? What governance roles does the sector perform? What are the defining trends that characterize the sector in the present age? The scope of the analysis is a broad scan of structures and roles rather than a detailed inventory of programs. Three clusters of governing activities are addressed: policy planning, consultation and coordination; crating structures, allocating resources and delivering services; and accountabilaity roles and processes. Each of the clusters is examined in relation to child and family and to disability issues. The education, health-care and social-service sectors are profiled to identify important trends and issues in the governance of Canadian disability policy. A concern of the public sector's governance regime for children with disabilities and their families is the absence of clear, consistent and central accontability mechanisms. There is a deja vu discourse on disability reform, a strong sense that we have been here before. Among other factors, this frustrating pace of reform is due to bureaucratic factors and weak accountability mechanisms. To overcome this deja vu, the author calls for the adoption of a more inclusive and integrated governance regime for the disability policy domain