Getting stronger everyday
Maggie enjoys her busy schedule with the Early Intervention therapists. She has a total of eight therapy sessions per week: Now that Maggie is in school full-time, she meets her therapists at school. Most sessions last about 45 minutes, although sometimes Maggie loses interest before the end of the session.
Misty, the physical therapist PT comes over on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Maggie is just starting to think that PT is becoming more like work than play. Pam, the occupational therapist OT, sees Maggie on Wednedays and Fridays. Patti, Mag's Special Education Instructor SEIT, plays with Maggie onTuesday and Wednesday mornings, and Mindy, the Speech Language pathologist, builds Maggie's communication skills on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We are very fortunate to have such a great team working with Maggie. Jared, an EIP nurse and our service coordinator, helps us keep everything together, set goals and track Maggie's progress.
Growing Up is Hard Work
Maggie has responded well to all the hard work. Maggie is beginning to cruise and loves to climb on anything she can. It is amazing how much progress she has made in ten months. Still, Maggie has a lot of hard work ahead of her. We look forward to Maggie's greater mobility with great anticipation and an equal helping of apprehension. We have not really made the house toddler proof, much less Angel-proof.
We suspected that Maggie had some sensory processing issues, and these have become more apparent through her therapies. She is cautious touching things with her hands and often reacts negatively when food is first offered, even if she loves the food. Erin went to special sensory workshop in Springfield, MA. She got an indoor swing and lots of materials. Maggie's therapists have all been great in working with us to understand Maggie's sensory needs.
Maggie's IFSP The Individual Family Service Plan is the legal document that establshes early intervention services in New York. (Most other States have similar documents.) For school age kids, the IFSP is the equivalent to an IEP. This link includes Maggie's current IFSP and her past two rounds evaluations |
Maggie's Chiropractic Care Maggie undergoes a very visible transformation everythime she goes in for a chiropractic admustment with her Mama. Maggie is such a perfect patient that she was the guest star at the chiropractic college for a special class on care of children with special needs. |
Medicaid Waiver Services With more than a little persistence, we were able to obtain Medicaid Waiver Services for Maggie. These services are not income dependent, but did require a seperate round of evaluations to confirm developmental delay. This explains the steps we had to go through, and advocacy that we still need to do, order to gain more support for Maggie. |
The Therapy Debate While it should be obvious that we credit Maggie's therapists for much of the tremendous progress she has made in the past year, there is an argument within the spcieal needs community that is quite critical of theray programs. In this link we explore the arguments, share our own perspectives, and ask for reader comments. |
History of Early Intervention It was not that long ago that families and children with special needs received no support from state sponsored programs like early intervention. As politicians take aim at gutting Medicaid funding, we should remind ourselves how our society treated children with special needs before early intervention. |
Therapy Photo Album Team Maggie, as we call her therapists now, has been working with Maggie Since October 2004. We have been a little lax in cataloguing the progress, but include some photos in this therapy photo album. |
International Union of Angelic Anarchists Local 2.