Starting over . . . sort of

Well, Eun has officially been canned. At least by our family. I left our SC a voice mail message last Friday and followed it up with this email yesterday:

Hi Amber -

I left a voice mail message for you on Friday, but wanted to follow up by email to let you know what I'd like to discuss.

I would like to request a new physical therapist. I have a few reasons for this: firstly, I feel that Eun and I stopped seeing eye-to-eye on goals for Finn and how to reach those goals a while back. I am not in agreement that he should be put through exercises that make him cry, while she seems to have a "no pain, no gain" philosophy. I am not knocking her in this regard, I just don't feel that it fits in with what we want for Finn at this point. Additionally, we had agreed to PT sessions once a month. The last time we saw her was the first week of December. She said she would call after the first of the year to schedule Finn's next PT session, and it is now approaching the end of January and we have yet to hear from her. I don't know what's going on, but I have no interest in chasing her down. Because we seem to have a difference of opinion on how to approach Finn's PT anyway, it seems best if we just get a different therapist at this point.

Finn is due for his semi-annual evaluation next month, as well as an IFSP meeting to set new goals. I would like to get a new PT before that so that s/he can evaluate Finn and start fresh. I would appreciate it if you would let Eun know as soon as possible that we won't be using her services anymore, and also if you would get back to me as soon as you are able so that we can discuss this.

Thanks -

She (our SC) called me today and we talked for a little while on the phone. She assured me that it was not a problem to request a new therapist. However, since he's due for evaluation and renewal of his IFSP, and he'll likely qualify for ST and OT now as well as PT, we talked about how to approach that. She wanted to know if I would mind having Eun come out one more time to do an exit eval, and I said I'd rather she not, because at this point I just don't feel comfortable with her. So Amber, our SC, is going to meet with "the team" (whatever that means - I assume it's the powers that be at Regional Center) and decide if it would be better to have one of their staff therapists come out and do a baseline eval of Finn, or if Amber can just do an informal eval when she comes out for our IFSP meeting in a couple of weeks. I'm not sure if one is any better or worse than the other, so I'll leave it up to them how they want to handle evaluating him.

She said that it's not unusual for babies of this age to start doing center-based global therapy, and that there are benefits to it. I've been somewhat resistant to this idea for a few reasons, mainly practicality and convenience. I already spend so much of my days dropping kids off and picking them up from school at staggered times, and I refuse to mess with nap times, so that's a huge consideration for me. However, I guess I shouldn't dismiss it out of hand, so it probably wouldn't hurt to at least tour a couple of these centers, see what they have to offer, and decide if it's something that will work for us. Amber assured me that we are entitled to have in-home therapy until Finn is three, though, so the center-based therapy certainly isn't mandatory, although she did say that for our city, she only has one or two STs who do in-home therapy, and not a whole pool of them to choose from, so that may be an issue.

Anyway, I guess I'm feeling somewhat relieved that we've officially parted ways with Eun, and that we have the ball rolling in another direction now.