Discussing Autism

I was talking to several moms in our special needs group the other day describing what services we were getting from our school and from outside services. We are getting nothing, BTW.

In school AJ gets Speech and Occupational Therapy because he has communication processing disorders, both verbal and non verbal and he has Sensory Processing Disorder. However, we recently had an evaluation completed with a neuro-psychologist who indicates that AJ also has visual processing disorders, auditory processing disorders, and ADHD mixed type.

Now, back when AJ was 2 we had an Early Intervention coordinator do an evaluation on him as well. Most of these assessments were (at the time) developmental. However, they did pick up on some key things: he had some major sensory issues, he had serious speech delays, he had some medical issues like food intolerances and allergies that needed to be addressed, his developmental delays were across the board, scattered and both fine and gross motor. But they did not do their job.

As Early Intervention goes the one in the county we lived in was horrible. What they did was stall us until he turned 3 and could be evaluated for Early Childhood, and thus pushed out of their system. What they should have done is provide us with things that my friends are getting here in Illinois but I think they believed we were a family that could financially provide services, had decent insurance to cover it, and that our son would eventually develop, as he was from an institution. After all, he did not actually HAVE autism, did he?

They failed us and that is paying its price right now. We don’t have things like Boardmaker, swings and sensory tools, after school OT and speech, sensory diets or individualized lessons for him to be performed at home, etc. At one point we even asked them to provide respite for us and they stated that they did not do that. How could an Early Intervention Program NOT provide respite?

According to the State of New York, “Early intervention services are provided to help your child grow and develop, and to help you care for your child.
These services include evaluation services (including hearing and vision screening); home visits; speech, physical and other therapies; child development groups; family counseling; and, sometimes, even help with transportation. These services are provided at no cost to you.”

But, according to Michigan, where we lived ” Monies are allocated based on the number of infants and toddlers eligible for Early On services within each ISD and a base grant (based on size and numbers) for administration and coordination functions.
Early On is a family-focused process, with emphasis on family strengths and abilities, which requires the development of an individualized family service plan specific to each enrolled family, based on the findings of a multidisciplinary evaluation of the child and family.”

Because we were based in a low income county but were a higher income family we were told that we were doing more for our son than they could do for him. They told us to use our insurance to seek out OT and speech services and pay out of pocket. They told us that there was no respite for us. Why, because we could hire a babysitter?

I just can’t wait for the day that he can read…because apparently Michigan Early Intervention didn’t want him to.

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