[leenab]

Has anyone had experience with Early Intervention? I'm wondering what they do exactly? A foster parent support person suggested it. Here's the situation. T is 26 months old: she has a huge vocabulary but doesn't talk much at all. I'm lucky to hear 4 sentences a day out of her. She says "Yeah!" when it's time to eat. She occasionally talks to the cat, "Hi funny cat!" And says "Hi O" when we pick up O from school. This is about it. When her cw dropped her off he said that T talks all the time/non-stop. This is definately not the child we have in our home.

T is very well behaved and does follow the rules and directions. But T has a lot of food issues, mostly she wants it all the time and tantrums when she doesn't get it. She also chokes on a daily basis. It used to be atleast 4x day but has gone down to once a day. But requires a lot of prompts as to eat properly and not stuff her mouth full.

Other than this she has a mouth full of cavities to be fixed soon as well as a lazy eye which she's also been refered out for.

Are these thing Early Intervention will address?

Thanks,
LeenaB

[Malificient]

leenab, I am 95% sure the issues you addressed in your email were indeed ones that you can receive services for thru childhood early intervention. Double check with you childs c/w to verify, please. You mentioned you have 1 adopted child, waiting to finalize on a second kiddo, what about "T" the 2 yr. old who your fostering? Are you working on reunification with the little one, or are your plans to adopt this fd of yours also? Just curious, malificient (aka. karen)

[bumpkin]

Leena

My two have been in early intervention for about 5 months now and are doing remarkably. not only is it great to see them progress but to get weekly updates and what is good and what is not, how to help them move,eat,talk better is such a great boost. I was referred in by my pediatrician because of their prematurity - but you don't have to be sent by a dr. you can just call. They will send a team (usually 2 people) to evaluate her - basicallay they play with her and ask her to perform a standardized set of tasks. Will ask you what she is doing etc... She must be delayed to obtain services - so don't sugar coat things, if you're not sure if she is doing something or not, just say your not sure or no... They'll send someone or a team out once a week or every other week, whatever they feel she needs to work on her issues. Even if they find she is not delayed enough to qualify - at least you will know she was evaluated. Probably would be beneficial too, if she does RU she'll be hooked up into services.

Best of luck

Bumpkin

[mom2GRLC]

I've fostered 30 kids and many of them have needed special services. We have a really good school in our area called Pathfinders Pre-school. They are an early intervention facility and the kids have to be delayed 30 % in two areas to qualify. It's a daycare that is covered by Medicaid and they also offer a bus to transport the kids. Most of the kids I get in...if i feel their might be a need i automatically call them up and they take the kids in for a 1 month trial period so they can determine what area's the child might need help in. Having the child tested in one day really does not give them a good idea of what the child needs because most are shy or nervous or may just be having a bad day.

After a month we have a conference and find out if the child qualifies and in what areas. In some cases they find the child does not qualify and if they only need help in one area they can get a refferal from their doctor for therapy elsewhere.

My only problem with this is the fact that it is a daycare. I'm a stay at home mom and would prefer to have my child at home and bring him or her to any therapy's they need and be able to participate in them with the child.

It's my experience in the passed with a 6 week old baby that needed services that DHS prefers to use the daycare rather than sign the child up for different therapies at home or at a facility. I went rounds with one social worker.....saying how rediculous it was for this 6 week old baby to be bounced around from daycare to home and not really be able to build the strong bond with one individual like a baby should....when i was eager to have him at home and bring him to all his therapies. I was so mad about that situation.

IF you are stay at home mom and possibly want to adopt this child and build your relationship with her then I would definately push for at home therapy or therapy appointments rather than the daycare situation. In my experience once the child has entered the daycare they really try and keep them there. One child we have had for a long time and have wanted to adopt if she comes up for adoption ...should have been out of the program last November but they keep extending it and extending it....She is so smart and it really makes me angry that i got her started in the program to begin with.

[mj77]

I have had my son evaluated by EI shortly after we got him. I have heard mixed things about them. My experience was positive. I know because of funding issues here, they tend to weed out the kids with issues that are less significant to them.

My aunt fought with them as they were wonderful in helping my cousin to an extent but refused to accept any diagnosis. Turns out later after my cousin saw a neurologist (against EI suggestion) there were a number of issues he'd had that would have been treated and improved had EI accepted there was something more going on. I am not the biggest fan of state services as these. They are helpful entirely to some and only to an extent for others. It probably depends on the funding--just my assumption.

[leenab]

Thanks everyone,
We're working on reunification with T. I really want her to go back to her parents, she really misses her biodad. She's adorable and sweet, but I just don't get the feeling about her that I got about the boys. Probably because T is just a foster child and I don't want to get super super attached to her and not want to let her go back to her parents when it's time. And T is our first girl. Girls are a lot more work than boys. Or maybe boys are just easier to mother.

Anyway, I sent a note and photos with her for the visit and have a framed photo for her next visit. We've only had T for one month, which I know is not long at all. She's been on 1 visit so far, even though she's supposed to have biweekly visits. Her cw is in la-la-lost-untracable land as is the supervisor. So it looks like it's all me. Even the law guardian can't get ahold of the cw & supervisor.

I'm going to call Early Intervention on Monday and set up an appointment. It's all really strange bc we don't know how long T will be staying. With the boys we knew from day one that adoption was the caseplan, O came legally free for adoption and Raj was freed 39 days after being placed with us. Both had some issues but were too old for early Intervention so we had to go the neurodevelopmental evaluation route (much longer to get appointmnets approx 6 months).

We went through all of the dxs with Raj and are really comfortable with it as his caseworker gave us the go ahead since the caseplan was adoption. With T I just don't want to step on anyone's toes, but want to get her what she needs in the most efficient easiest way possible.

jessica: I am a stay at home mom so I'd like to keep her at home for therapy if possible or at least drive her to appointments. Our state is really wierd about things though.

Raj is home with me as his cw & I had agreed that it was the best case scenerio for him at the time. He was evaluated today in Mathmatics and scored on a 2nd semester kindergarteen level. I still can't believe he's doing so well. Considering he didn't even know his colors in June, let alone anything else. Previously he was evaluated by EI (before placement with us) and they said he just needed regular preschool) even although his former former cw thought he was autistic. Which he isn't, but is ADHD, SID, delayed, expressive & receptive delays and possible FAS. So much for EI helping him. Now he sees an OT & speech theraapist weekly. And he continues to amaze me.

O is in preschool as that's where his cw wants him to be, even though we expressed our discontent with him being in school 6-7 hours a day at the age of 3 when I'm a stay at home mom. He isn't learning anyting there other than bad habits. Just pretty much insane. But his adoption is scheduled for Nov 20th, 2004 so then he'll legally be ours and we can educate him as we see fit.

So with T I'm not sure how her cw is as I've only met him when he dropped her off on day one and when he picked her up for a family visit. He was in a rush both of these times. And we talked once on the phone for about 6 minutes a few days after palcement as I needed her medicade card/fosterparent ID letter/immunization record (which I had to track down). So it looks like it's all me.

I think I'm rambling now. Thanks,
LeenaB

[bumpkin]

Just as a follow up. Our EI will not even speak to medical tests to be done or not to be done... she said they can't offer any medical advice one way or another.... and they only do EI at hom ein our state??

Best of Luck Leena - I think it's good to have her evaluated and also becasue if she does RU then perhaps they can continue and you can have another "set of eyes" watching her.