When we had the initial IEP meeting a little over nine months ago, one of the biggest changes was the removal of the Monster’s physical therapy.
According to the reports, he didn’t need any further physical therapy – the schools are primarily concerned with his ability to walk normally, ascend and descend stairs, and handle himself with his class at a ‘reasonable pace’. The fact that he’s still clearly delayed, because he doesn’t ascend or descend stairs with alternating motion, doesn’t seem to factor in to the decision, and despite our best efforts to keep it in the plan, the schools put their collective foot down.
I believe that our insurance covers reasonable physical therapy. In theory, we’re still looking into supplemental physical and speech therapy, in addition to the services we’re already getting from the school – having our provider switched up on us by my employer did throw a little bit of a kink into things, but it’s more a hiccup than anything else.
On the other side, there’s still that lovely Low Intensity Support Services that Maryland offers for children with Autism.
LISS doesn’t pay for things covered by insurance… but it does cover things like adaptive gymnastics. As I’ve made multiple references to in this vein, he was going to Rebounders for this, paid for by the state agencies, until his school schedule made this impossible. This left a bit of a balance in his account there for whenever we could get back to it.
Rebounders called last week to let my wife know that a few slots opened up on Thursdays at 4. Since his school lets out at 3:30, it’s now feasible for me to race over to his school, collect him, and get back to Rebounders (it’s around the corner from my office) for him to have a half-hour there before getting home.
My major hope with getting back into this is that we’ll see some motion forward again on his getting up to speed physically. Since the school’s not willing to do it, we need to…