Tomorrow we begin the process of having Scooter evaluated for the public school's services. He has a total of at least three appointments over the next week or two, and then we should be able to get a sense of which services they'll be providing.
Trillian spoke with the elementary school's OT provider today. She gave some background on Scooter's issues and where things stand for him. Although we won't know for sure for a bit, I suspect we're standing on the edge I thought we were. Now that Scooter has been through two blocks of OT, he may have improved too much to receive OT sessions in school. Due to the various regulations (local, state, federal--everybody has rules), he probably won't test far enough behind in development to qualify specifically for OT. The funny thing is that when he was evaluated almost a year ago, he was approximately 18 months behind in gross motor skills; his ball-catching ability came in at 30 months instead of 48. Now, he's probably within normal range for that skill and others.
On the other hand, our public school system recognizes sensory issues as a separate category under which students can qualify for special services. Although Scooter has improved greatly in that area, he's still noticeably distractable; instead of crying and running away when the vacuum cleaner runs, he just stops what he's doing until it's off again.
I am actually counting on the fact that he'll be in an unknown setting to skew the results a little more in our favor. School will be like that anyway at the beginning. And I won't be adverse to the removal of services down the line, once he has established himself at school and is more comfortable.
2 comments:
I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that things turn out the way you want them to. It's far better to start out with more services and then remove them little by little than to NOT have them--I'll be hoping for you...
I too hope you get the services and can phase them out later.
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