My son Luke is a little over 2 1/2 and I am really trying to do the research ahead of time before he is transitioned to and IEP. He is currently attending the only day care center in our area, which happens to be run by the school district. He is currently attending 2-3 days a week, but I am going to switch to a a full-time spot for personal reasons. I currently pay for his day care. He has received therapies from a developmental specialist, 1x week and OT 1 x week since he has ben 6 weeks old. When he was 1 year he started PT. I drive him 1 hour into Lake Tahoe for EI services- they are not provided in my home. After this summer we switched to therapy only 2x month and PT once a month. We declined speech services since the ST in our area was really a waste of time. I focused the time I would have spent driving 1 hour there, 1 hour in ST and 1 hour back on learning about encouraging speech development using the Hanen Method and signing. Luke says over 20 words and often uses two word phrases and seems to make most speech sounds. Our OT took care of oral-motor development. Luke is doing very well and we are happy overall with his development. My concern, however, is with the lack of resources in our area. The school district does not have an OT or PT on staff. They do, however, have an ST. One of the preschool teachers is a Montessori trained instructor- which is heavily based on fine motor skills. I know IEP's are supposed to be based on the individuals strengths and weaknesses, but how can a get the district to hire 2 staff members. Any suggestions? One condition I would like to place in the IEP is a certain amount of time each day where Luke gets one-on-one instruction. How much? and from a teacher or an aide? I have already searched this forum for an average that ST is offered to P/S children so I have an idea of what might be appropriate.

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Rachael
Wife to Chuck. Mom to Courtney 7/00 & Luke (D) 6/05

I was going to suggest that you contact the ARC http://www.arccalifornia.org/; unfortunately Placer County does not have a local org. - you might email the Sacramento office to see if they know of resources in your area. As to the school, it's (IMHO) a relationship - you have to find out what you can get, and then keep asking if it's not enough. . . "appropriate" is often in the eyes of the beholder, or the holder of the cards, in this case.

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Nature goes her own way and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.
-Goethe

We live in a rural district also (we have a whopping 500 kids PreK - 12). Although our district does have OT/PT/Speech on staff, some of the even smaller districts in our county don't. But they do hire itinerant therapists on a case by case basis, so they only pay those therapists hourly as opposed to hiring new staff. Perhaps that is something your school district could do.

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Ecki



MomMom of Kayla (Ds/Autism 4/5/04) and Laurie (PDD-NOS 7/12/01)

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