Speech Eval

We finally had our speech eval this morning. We originally had it scheduled for last week, but Finn got sick so we had to put it off.

Anyway, I liked the SLP a lot. She was very warm and spent close to an hour playing with Finn while asking questions of me and taking notes. When I told her that Finn has never received any speech therapy and that we've had to fight just to get this evaluation, she was appalled. When I told her that the reason we've been given is that Finn is supposedly "not cognitively ready to benefit from speech therapy," she was appalled.

So, basically we've been screwed big time as far as ST goes.

Unfortunately, we can't turn back the clock. Here we are, and all we can do is move forward from here.

She had lots of things to say and observations to make that left me feeling very hopeful. She noted that Finn does mimic certain sounds, he does babble quite a bit, he does follow some verbal cues and commands, and he definitely responds to music, which she said is a wonderful tool in teaching communication. She said, "He's got lots of potential." I told her, "He's got TONS of potential."

Without a doubt, though, he's got severe speech delays. He needs speech therapy. She's going to submit her recommendation to our service coordinator that he begin receiving ST as soon as possible, hopefully with her.

In possible bad news, there is talk that Regional Center is sending letters out to families informing them that they must go through their private health insurance now to receive services, and that Regional Center will only cover what isn't covered by insurance. This could be not so great for us because:

• We would only be authorized to see therapists in our network (presently, neither Emily, our OT, nor Rebecca, this SLP are in our network), and those therapists may not do home visits, plus it would mean starting with therapists we don't know or have any rapport with;
• The co-pays! Sheesh. At 20 bucks a pop . . . sheesh.

But so far we haven't gotten any letter from Regional Center about going through our insurance, so for now I'll just keep my fingers crossed.