The Early Intervention Program (EIP) is federally funded , but run by the local health department. EIP serves children with developmental delays from birth through two years of age. It is free to families regardless of financial condition. (When Republicans gut social services, this is what they are really talking about.)

New York EIP - A Parent's Guide

The New York State Department of Health website has a good overview guide for parents. Find the link to the table of contents here.

Getting Started

Parents, pediatricians or nearly anyone can refer a child to EIP. The first step is to meet with a service coordinator. In our case, Jared came to our house, talked with us about the program, observed Maggie and scheduled an intake evaluation for us right away. The tough part is coordinating the schedules of two or more specialists to come over and evaluate Maggie, but we had an evaluation scheduled within a month. (We had to move back to Ithaca from St. Louis in the interim.)

Maggie's evaluation involved Jared as the service coordinator, a physical therapist and a child psychologist. They use various standardized developmental scoring charts to evaluate Maggie's development in all the major domains: gross motor skills, fine motor skills, cognitive skills, social skills and maybe a few others. In most areas, Maggie was 50 percent delayed and therefore eligible for services. To be eligible, a child has to be at least 30 percent delayed in one major area or 25 percent delayed in two or more developmental domains. Typically we know as soon as they are done with the evaluation. The specialists review their notes with you and the service coordinator can get right to work in designing a therapy plan. At least that is what they did for us since there was no question that Maggie was eligible.

Choosing Therapists

Once it is determined that your child is eligible for services, your service coordinator is responsible for finding the right therapists. The first decision parents need to make is whether the service coordinator is the right fit for the family. Jared was very careful to tell us that we could choose another coordinator, but clearly cared about Maggie, worked hard to get things scheduled quickly and is a nice guy to boot. But we did discover that sometimes you do need to change providers.

Maggie was eligible for one or two PT sessions per week. Naturally, we wanted her to get two. When Erin spoke to the first PT, she made it sound as though her schedule was too rigid to get two sessions. We had just learned that Maggie had a genetic disorder, so telling her Mom that there was time for the amount of therapy she was eligible for quickly soured that relationship. We called Jared for a new PT before the first one ever came to the house. Every other therapist has been great for us and Maggie. We deeply appreciate how much everyone is commited to helping Maggie. At the same time, we are Maggie's advocates and we can not be afraid to demand the full services and resources that Maggie deserves.