DC early intervention is all virtual??!!?

[Anonymous]

My DS started Strong Start when he was 18 mo, which was about 6 mo before covid started. I had my doubts when I learned things would be switching to all virtual, however it actually worked quite well. I think it had a lot to do with the speech therapist. Our first therapist was great and would interact with us while DS was playing. She also set goals and gave me strategies to implement at home. DS liked her a lot and really progressed over the year. We ended up getting a new therapist because of contracts changing. Our second therapist wasn’t as great. She would mostly hold up objects and ask him to name them. DS was 2.5 mo at the time and not interested in that style of therapy. Needless to say at that point he advanced to the point of no longer needing therapy, so we left the program.

So, I would go into with an open mind. Some of the speech therapists are great and really know how to engage with children virtually.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My best friend works for EI.. They go into multiple family homes a day with multiple people, indoors, up close (the nature of their work) for 30-60 mins at a time. Completely unsafe during a pandemic.

They have made the correct call to protect their employees. And yes, they exist to teach patents, not to be direct hands on with kids. The parents who complain the loudest about virtual are the ones who want the provider to come in every week and "fix" their kid while the parent gets a "break" and does laundry or plays on their phone, which is not why the services are provided.

Go into it with an open mind, OP. A good service provider can teach you a LOT about ways to work with and help your child long term (long after they age out of EI) virtually.

Each week my speech therapist would come over and ask “What do you want to work on today?” It was super irritating. I wanted to work on whatever would help my child the most. Whenever I said something to that effect they would just reword the question until I picked something. It was so random and I felt like I was always guessing with no plan. Parent coaching sucks. I love doing private therapy and having a therapist who actually has a plan and implements it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 15 month old doesn’t have any words yet, so his pediatrician referred him for Strong Start, DC’s early intervention services. I got a call from them, and apparently ALL services are over phone or video because of covid, both the evaluation and any treatment.

How is this possibly a good idea? How can you evaluate a 15 month old over video? My kid doesn’t do any screens other than a weekly FaceTime with the grandparents and he just stares at the screen, there’s no engagement there. How on earth could you possibly teach a 15 month old, or even diagnose the issue, over a screen? Plus, at this point, shouldn’t all these people be vaccinated??

Has anyone done this in the past year? Was it actually helpful?

Any insiders know if there’s a timeline for going back to face to face for this? The lady on the phone couldn’t tell me anything.

Your 15 month old would be one of the people involved in the eval so not all are vaccinated.

The evals that my 15 month old did, many years ago, mostly consisted of them asking me to try to get him to do something, and then watching and scoring. I think some of them would have been tricky virtually because we might not have had what they needed, but I think it would have been possible.

[Anonymous]

Echo the folks above who have said that the weekly session or two is not really the point -- the point is providing strategies for the primary caregivers. We started strong start last fall for my 12 month old (also no words), and his virtual therapist was fantastic. Great ideas for things for us to do, great connection with our baby even over zoom, and he's made excellent progress. We just transitioned to new therapist a few weeks ago and the jury's still out -- but that has nothing to do with zoom.

[Anonymous]

15 month old was referred to EI for not having words? My friends 18 month old says 1 word and the doctor wasn't worried. Does your child mumble different consonants and vowels?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:15 month old was referred to EI for not having words? My friends 18 month old says 1 word and the doctor wasn't worried. Does your child mumble different consonants and vowels?

People, let's stop trying to diagnose children we've never met. Receptive and expressive language development is about much more than just "words" or "no words". Ped referred and EI will assess, SO much better than we can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:15 month old was referred to EI for not having words? My friends 18 month old says 1 word and the doctor wasn't worried. Does your child mumble different consonants and vowels?

People, let's stop trying to diagnose children we've never met. Receptive and expressive language development is about much more than just "words" or "no words". Ped referred and EI will assess, SO much better than we can.

OP here. Thank you PP, I appreciate that, and agree that this is for the medical professionals to deal with, I'm not interested in feedback from online randos on this issue.

However - I do want to answer the initial question in case it's coming from a place of concern for your friend's child. Yes, this is primarily because of no words, but while he does babble, it's primarily vowels, very few and infrequent consonants, so that's also concerning. Additionally - one word would have made a BIG difference as I understand it. If he had one word, this would not be an issue at 15 months. Not sure how that change at 18 months, and also obviously different doctors have different approaches. The doctor also said basically "well, he's a bit behind, so I could refer you to early intervention, or you could come back in six weeks and we could reevaluate" (ie, waiting until 18 months to reevaluate was not a viable option). So, it was clearly a borderline case. But we figured, if we would need to make an extra appointment anyway, and it was free, and it can take a few weeks to get things moving, why not get going now?

[Anonymous]

We had DC2 evaluated for speech in a surrounding county (not DC) and it didn't go well.

Just for reference, my DC1 went through the entire speech program pre-covid- had an in person evaluation that I thought was much more thorough as they were able to interact with DC1 themselves. We loved the speech therapist who came. Even though the therapist did teach me tricks, she was very engaging with DC1 herself and DC1 loved her- maybe I just got lucky.

Now I had put off referring DC2 for speech knowing that it was online and thinking DC2 would not do well the way DC1 had with everything in person, even though DC2 is much more friendly/less stranger anxiety in general than DC1 was at the same age. But I tried to be open minded. DC2 had just started with a few words between the intake assessment and later developmental assessment. At the developmental assessment, I felt like they really weren't able to get an accurate picture of DC2 over the computer screen, like nuances got missed... plus DC2 was either distracted with the screen or wouldn't perform or a few times DC2 did say a word or two but so soft the evaluators didn't hear DC2. DC2 ended up marked much lower than DC2 should have IMO- like I'm not sure how much they believed me when I stated DC2 had words. But then they didn't even offer an actual speech therapist but an "educator" where they basically just wanted to teach me how to play with my child. Luckily DC2 added several more words right after the developmental assessment and seems to be continuing to catching up quickly (adding probably 3-5 words a week now), so we ended up declining services. I don't know what I would do if my child had a severe delay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had DC2 evaluated for speech in a surrounding county (not DC) and it didn't go well.

Just for reference, my DC1 went through the entire speech program pre-covid- had an in person evaluation that I thought was much more thorough as they were able to interact with DC1 themselves. We loved the speech therapist who came. Even though the therapist did teach me tricks, she was very engaging with DC1 herself and DC1 loved her- maybe I just got lucky.

Now I had put off referring DC2 for speech knowing that it was online and thinking DC2 would not do well the way DC1 had with everything in person, even though DC2 is much more friendly/less stranger anxiety in general than DC1 was at the same age. But I tried to be open minded. DC2 had just started with a few words between the intake assessment and later developmental assessment. At the developmental assessment, I felt like they really weren't able to get an accurate picture of DC2 over the computer screen, like nuances got missed... plus DC2 was either distracted with the screen or wouldn't perform or a few times DC2 did say a word or two but so soft the evaluators didn't hear DC2. DC2 ended up marked much lower than DC2 should have IMO- like I'm not sure how much they believed me when I stated DC2 had words. But then they didn't even offer an actual speech therapist but an "educator" where they basically just wanted to teach me how to play with my child. Luckily DC2 added several more words right after the developmental assessment and seems to be continuing to catching up quickly (adding probably 3-5 words a week now), so we ended up declining services. I don't know what I would do if my child had a severe delay.

That's unfortunate that they didn't manage virtual effectively. Our virtual assessment relied a lot on our reports. They also encouraged us to send in videos so they could see what she did outside of the assessment. During the assessment and during our sessions with the therapist, DD was rarely interacting with the video - they were instructing us what to do and modeling for us what we should say. I thought it worked fine for our 18 month old, but what you experienced definitely sounds frustrating!

[Anonymous]

Pre-COVID, when I called Strong Start they were telling me that there was a six week wait for evaluation. Within two days of the one year appointment where they told me to contact SS, I took my (non-walking, non-crawling) to private physical therapy in MD which my insurance paid for with only a small co-pay. She started walking at 18 months just before COVID hit. Just another example of how the city does not function for most kids, those with resources opt-out.

[Anonymous]

This is crap. Sorry. EI is generally sub par with rare exception. Parents who can afford it are doing in person services already. There are some things that can’t be done remotely and there are some jobs you can’t do over zoom. If you don’t want to do that, find a new job. Most EI service providers also work for other providers who with private pay are seeing patients in person. This is affecting those that can’t afford it and those just starting out in therapy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My best friend works for EI.. They go into multiple family homes a day with multiple people, indoors, up close (the nature of their work) for 30-60 mins at a time. Completely unsafe during a pandemic.

They have made the correct call to protect their employees. And yes, they exist to teach patents, not to be direct hands on with kids. The parents who complain the loudest about virtual are the ones who want the provider to come in every week and "fix" their kid while the parent gets a "break" and does laundry or plays on their phone, which is not why the services are provided.

Go into it with an open mind, OP. A good service provider can teach you a LOT about ways to work with and help your child long term (long after they age out of EI) virtually.

Great for your friend. So our private OT does that exact same thing, in person, vaccinated and masked. Been eligible for the vaccine for more than a month. No clue what your point is. Did you do the therapy through EI? No, right? The pandemic is not an excuse to fail to fulfill a state funded program properly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My best friend works for EI.. They go into multiple family homes a day with multiple people, indoors, up close (the nature of their work) for 30-60 mins at a time. Completely unsafe during a pandemic.

They have made the correct call to protect their employees. And yes, they exist to teach patents, not to be direct hands on with kids. The parents who complain the loudest about virtual are the ones who want the provider to come in every week and "fix" their kid while the parent gets a "break" and does laundry or plays on their phone, which is not why the services are provided.

Go into it with an open mind, OP. A good service provider can teach you a LOT about ways to work with and help your child long term (long after they age out of EI) virtually.

Great for your friend. So our private OT does that exact same thing, in person, vaccinated and masked. Been eligible for the vaccine for more than a month. No clue what your point is. Did you do the therapy through EI? No, right? The pandemic is not an excuse to fail to fulfill a state funded program properly.

Also, it’s pretty rich to trash the parents of SN kids trying to get services for their kids and then insist others keep an “open mind.” If you’d ever dealt with the anxiety, fear and just horrible stress of trying to deal with a child with needs and delays especially if they are behavioral you’d have a bit more of a clue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My best friend works for EI.. They go into multiple family homes a day with multiple people, indoors, up close (the nature of their work) for 30-60 mins at a time. Completely unsafe during a pandemic.

They have made the correct call to protect their employees. And yes, they exist to teach patents, not to be direct hands on with kids. The parents who complain the loudest about virtual are the ones who want the provider to come in every week and "fix" their kid while the parent gets a "break" and does laundry or plays on their phone, which is not why the services are provided.

Go into it with an open mind, OP. A good service provider can teach you a LOT about ways to work with and help your child long term (long after they age out of EI) virtually.

Laundry and phone time? GTFO.
EI workers just come to fill out a form. Most kids don’t need EI and they know that the kid will “graduate” anyway (and they’ll get the credit). When kids really need help, parents are desperate. Desperate. Look at SN forum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My best friend works for EI.. They go into multiple family homes a day with multiple people, indoors, up close (the nature of their work) for 30-60 mins at a time. Completely unsafe during a pandemic.

They have made the correct call to protect their employees. And yes, they exist to teach patents, not to be direct hands on with kids. The parents who complain the loudest about virtual are the ones who want the provider to come in every week and "fix" their kid while the parent gets a "break" and does laundry or plays on their phone, which is not why the services are provided.

Go into it with an open mind, OP. A good service provider can teach you a LOT about ways to work with and help your child long term (long after they age out of EI) virtually.

Great for your friend. So our private OT does that exact same thing, in person, vaccinated and masked. Been eligible for the vaccine for more than a month. No clue what your point is. Did you do the therapy through EI? No, right? The pandemic is not an excuse to fail to fulfill a state funded program properly.

Also, it’s pretty rich to trash the parents of SN kids trying to get services for their kids and then insist others keep an “open mind.” If you’d ever dealt with the anxiety, fear and just horrible stress of trying to deal with a child with needs and delays especially if they are behavioral you’d have a bit more of a clue.

+1 I want to just say as the PP who had a good experience with virtual EI, I am pretty horrified that they stopped ALL in person services regardless of need. I do think there much that can be done virtually by a good therapist depending on the age and nature of the need, but it won't work for every child, and their total lack of acknowledgment of this truly abhorrent.