The ethics of price gauging special needs families

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I completely agree with the poster mentioning advocates as something to be wary of. In my experience, they are the biggest price gougers and some of the least ethical operators in the field. Some of them clearly want to earn their hourly pay rate by dragging out meetings endlessly, arguing with the school, and obtaining no meaningful benefit for your child. Advocates CAN help in some cases, usually when it is clear cut that your child is being denied access to something that they are obviously entitled to (i.e the school won't even evaluate them for an IEP and they are four grade levels behind). However, a lot of the time, they argue for small word changes in the goals that are antagonistic and change absolutely nothing about the services. Or, they argue for something knowing full well it won't be granted given their own knowledge of the system, charging you for their time instead of being honest about what is realistic in your child's case. In the worst cases, they don't even know the child they are arguing for and don't have expertise in that particular disability. I've worked with many advocates and only a few are truly ethical operators, in my opinion.

Can you recommend a good one or say who to stay away from?

You will be much better off with a a special ed attorney instead of an advocate

My experience was the opposite. If you are not planning to sue you don’t need a lawyer.

advocates are not a regulated field, a lot of them do not know what they are doing. i have seen so much damage done. and wasted $.

EXACTLY! Most are truly awful and most go into the gielf because they, too, have ADHD, etc., and "want to help". I can't tell you how many weirdos we tried to hire for our SN kids.

On the other hand, you only want a lawyer if you have tried and tried and are getting nowhre or want to sue.

No, this is not true. A good lawyer can help you avoid needing to sue.

No they can’t. They are much more likely to put things on an adversarial footing. They also are not professional educators or mental health professionals and haven’t been immersed in school culture. My advocate was immensely helpful in making key suggestions based on what she knew could be feasible due to her experience; and she was super calm and collaborative but also assertive.

A lot of advocates are not professional educators or mental health professionals either. Many have never been immersed in school culture. Special ed attorneys often have years of experience dealing with schools. They can also be super calm and collaborative but also assertive. Plus they know the law - which is really necessary in this area. Without that, you're losing a lot.

If you hire one without asking for qualifications then that's on you. Our advocate got us a publicly funded private placement in third grade. Kid is now in 10th. At $50,000 a year that's some ROI.

+1. Like everything else you need to be a good consumer. I would probably hire a lawyer if I wanted a private placement at least to consult, but I’m sure some advocates can do a good job in some cases (and for cheaper).

[Anonymous]

I'm curious what you mean by price gouging? How much are you paying? I also find it absurd that people have no problem paying a hair dresser with no college weekly $250, yet they will balk at the price of my professional SLP services to help their child communicate with them when I have a masters degree and many, many years of clinical experience and I charge half that rate!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what you mean by price gouging? How much are you paying? I also find it absurd that people have no problem paying a hair dresser with no college weekly $250, yet they will balk at the price of my professional SLP services to help their child communicate with them when I have a masters degree and many, many years of clinical experience and I charge half that rate!

I think it stems from the weekly bills. DS sees a therapist that is $100/week. So that's $400/month. He's 15 now and life is much easier. But when he was young, I was paying an SLP, a therapist, and an OT each week. It's not that one provider is too much. It's that combined, with all the recommended services, it becomes cost and time prohibitive. I'm not paying my hairdresser $250/week.

[Anonymous]

Priorities, how can we say that $100 for a highly educated skilled professional to teach your child to read is too much, but it's perfectly acceptable to spend $200+ for the 5 minutes it takes your plumber to unclog your toilet or $100 fast food dinner delivery for the family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what you mean by price gouging? How much are you paying? I also find it absurd that people have no problem paying a hair dresser with no college weekly $250, yet they will balk at the price of my professional SLP services to help their child communicate with them when I have a masters degree and many, many years of clinical experience and I charge half that rate!

I think it stems from the weekly bills. DS sees a therapist that is $100/week. So that's $400/month. He's 15 now and life is much easier. But when he was young, I was paying an SLP, a therapist, and an OT each week. It's not that one provider is too much. It's that combined, with all the recommended services, it becomes cost and time prohibitive. I'm not paying my hairdresser $250/week.

This! That PP with a master's degree sounds clueless.

It's the relentless amount of therapy and how they can add up to hundreds of dollars a week with no end in sight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I completely agree with the poster mentioning advocates as something to be wary of. In my experience, they are the biggest price gougers and some of the least ethical operators in the field. Some of them clearly want to earn their hourly pay rate by dragging out meetings endlessly, arguing with the school, and obtaining no meaningful benefit for your child. Advocates CAN help in some cases, usually when it is clear cut that your child is being denied access to something that they are obviously entitled to (i.e the school won't even evaluate them for an IEP and they are four grade levels behind). However, a lot of the time, they argue for small word changes in the goals that are antagonistic and change absolutely nothing about the services. Or, they argue for something knowing full well it won't be granted given their own knowledge of the system, charging you for their time instead of being honest about what is realistic in your child's case. In the worst cases, they don't even know the child they are arguing for and don't have expertise in that particular disability. I've worked with many advocates and only a few are truly ethical operators, in my opinion.

Can you recommend a good one or say who to stay away from?

You will be much better off with a a special ed attorney instead of an advocate

My experience was the opposite. If you are not planning to sue you don’t need a lawyer.

advocates are not a regulated field, a lot of them do not know what they are doing. i have seen so much damage done. and wasted $.

EXACTLY! Most are truly awful and most go into the gielf because they, too, have ADHD, etc., and "want to help". I can't tell you how many weirdos we tried to hire for our SN kids.

On the other hand, you only want a lawyer if you have tried and tried and are getting nowhre or want to sue.

No, this is not true. A good lawyer can help you avoid needing to sue.

No they can’t. They are much more likely to put things on an adversarial footing. They also are not professional educators or mental health professionals and haven’t been immersed in school culture. My advocate was immensely helpful in making key suggestions based on what she knew could be feasible due to her experience; and she was super calm and collaborative but also assertive.

A lot of advocates are not professional educators or mental health professionals either. Many have never been immersed in school culture. Special ed attorneys often have years of experience dealing with schools. They can also be super calm and collaborative but also assertive. Plus they know the law - which is really necessary in this area. Without that, you're losing a lot.

If you hire one without asking for qualifications then that's on you. Our advocate got us a publicly funded private placement in third grade. Kid is now in 10th. At $50,000 a year that's some ROI.

DP. I agree with you to an extent but this partially depends on where you are. A skilled advocate is going to have a much easier time getting you a publicly funded private placement from say a charter in dcps than they will from APS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Priorities, how can we say that $100 for a highly educated skilled professional to teach your child to read is too much, but it's perfectly acceptable to spend $200+ for the 5 minutes it takes your plumber to unclog your toilet or $100 fast food dinner delivery for the family.

We were paying more than that. We had a really good OT one place who we paid something like $140 an hour-not easy. When she moved, they gave us someone new to the field who was way too green and charged the SAME. I have an excellent plumber who can fix any issue and I probably see him once every few years and it's for new issues because when he takes care of something it is resolved. Therapies go on for many years and sometimes you see more leaps when you take a break from the therapy then you did during.

Also, the worst is when people lie or stretch the truth. We almost hired a therapist for DD who claimed to have 20 years' experience. Luckily, I knew to ask questions. She had just gotten licensed! Her 20 years of experience was as a teacher, not a therapist. Her profile did not specify this. Luckily, I had a friend who has kids at the school, and she said she would not hire this woman to be a therapist and she suspected she had not even worked with SN kids that long because she was clueless. One advocate mentions she is a lawyer, but never mentions she has never practiced sped law-totally unrelated field.

We had an ST once who claimed to also work at a prestigious SN private school. Over time we just didn't feel she was worth it and there were some red flags. I finally checked with the school to see if she even worked there. She did not. She contracted there at one point, but they moved on.

Some interventionists have been worth bleeding money. We've had more good ones than disappointments. Integrity matters, but even people who are transparent aren't always at the level you expect for their experience. We've had newbies who were honest about being newbies, who just had a special gift. Price doesn't always tell you much. We've had excellent people who took insurance and excellent people who charged a lot.

[Anonymous]

I don’t know if it’s gouging per se but when we were in the thick of it doing OT, therapy, social skills group etc. it was all out of pocket and not covered by our insurance. For me that’s what is so frustrating. It was literally thousands of dollars each month, and we got a minuscule amount back in reim. We are fortunate that we could afford it, but it is crazy that the services that my child needed were not covered by our insurance and there were no viable alternatives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what you mean by price gouging? How much are you paying? I also find it absurd that people have no problem paying a hair dresser with no college weekly $250, yet they will balk at the price of my professional SLP services to help their child communicate with them when I have a masters degree and many, many years of clinical experience and I charge half that rate!

I think it stems from the weekly bills. DS sees a therapist that is $100/week. So that's $400/month. He's 15 now and life is much easier. But when he was young, I was paying an SLP, a therapist, and an OT each week. It's not that one provider is too much. It's that combined, with all the recommended services, it becomes cost and time prohibitive. I'm not paying my hairdresser $250/week.

This! That PP with a master's degree sounds clueless.

It's the relentless amount of therapy and how they can add up to hundreds of dollars a week with no end in sight.

I’m both a SN provider and the mom of a kid with SN and pricey therapies, so I’ve been on both sides of the issue. The costs are relentless and out of reach for so many people. That is absolutely true.

That doesn’t make a professional charging a reasonable rate for their expertise price gouging. It makes our education and health systems irresponsible and ineffective - families shouldn’t have to pay for their kid to be able to speak, go to school, read.

I charge $110 an hour and given the logistics, prep time, etc for the service I provide I can only fit in 15 sessions a week, max, though it works out to at least 35 hours of work a week. I’m trying to figure out how to pay the mortgage and buy my kid a new winter coat, not bathing in caviar and champagne.

[Anonymous]

So we agree that special needs therapists are providing invaluable needed services. So we should agree that they should be paid for their time and expertise as they need to make a living as well. If insurance companies paid their worth I'm sure more would take insurance. There's no price gouging. It's insulting to insist that special needs therapists should be paid $35-$65 an hour when people on these same boards are insisting unskilled babysitters are worth those same fees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what you mean by price gouging? How much are you paying? I also find it absurd that people have no problem paying a hair dresser with no college weekly $250, yet they will balk at the price of my professional SLP services to help their child communicate with them when I have a masters degree and many, many years of clinical experience and I charge half that rate!

I think it stems from the weekly bills. DS sees a therapist that is $100/week. So that's $400/month. He's 15 now and life is much easier. But when he was young, I was paying an SLP, a therapist, and an OT each week. It's not that one provider is too much. It's that combined, with all the recommended services, it becomes cost and time prohibitive. I'm not paying my hairdresser $250/week.

I see families drop money on vacations, cars, clothes then balk at paying a professional for their services. I'm a professional and I get offended when a family who can afford it asks me to work for free because of the public interest/need of their child. What about my own kids' needs? I need to work to pay for those. These parents don't work for free, why do they expect me to? Who pays my bills?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what you mean by price gouging? How much are you paying? I also find it absurd that people have no problem paying a hair dresser with no college weekly $250, yet they will balk at the price of my professional SLP services to help their child communicate with them when I have a masters degree and many, many years of clinical experience and I charge half that rate!

I think it stems from the weekly bills. DS sees a therapist that is $100/week. So that's $400/month. He's 15 now and life is much easier. But when he was young, I was paying an SLP, a therapist, and an OT each week. It's not that one provider is too much. It's that combined, with all the recommended services, it becomes cost and time prohibitive. I'm not paying my hairdresser $250/week.

I see families drop money on vacations, cars, clothes then balk at paying a professional for their services. I'm a professional and I get offended when a family who can afford it asks me to work for free because of the public interest/need of their child. What about my own kids' needs? I need to work to pay for those. These parents don't work for free, why do they expect me to? Who pays my bills?

The thing is - the reluctance to pay stems from the fact that with a few exceptions, we don’t really know if what you are doing is going to be worth it. A lot of us just feel like we “should” do it, and we all have a line where it is no longer worth it but maybe that vacation (where our kid just gets to be a kid) is worth it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what you mean by price gouging? How much are you paying? I also find it absurd that people have no problem paying a hair dresser with no college weekly $250, yet they will balk at the price of my professional SLP services to help their child communicate with them when I have a masters degree and many, many years of clinical experience and I charge half that rate!

I think it stems from the weekly bills. DS sees a therapist that is $100/week. So that's $400/month. He's 15 now and life is much easier. But when he was young, I was paying an SLP, a therapist, and an OT each week. It's not that one provider is too much. It's that combined, with all the recommended services, it becomes cost and time prohibitive. I'm not paying my hairdresser $250/week.

I see families drop money on vacations, cars, clothes then balk at paying a professional for their services. I'm a professional and I get offended when a family who can afford it asks me to work for free because of the public interest/need of their child. What about my own kids' needs? I need to work to pay for those. These parents don't work for free, why do they expect me to? Who pays my bills?

The thing is - the reluctance to pay stems from the fact that with a few exceptions, we don’t really know if what you are doing is going to be worth it. A lot of us just feel like we “should” do it, and we all have a line where it is no longer worth it but maybe that vacation (where our kid just gets to be a kid) is worth it.

Oh gosh - I’m not pp but the other SN provider. Then please, just don’t do the therapy. Don’t ask me to drop my rate or provide it for free. I often say yes, because I believe you can’t afford the service and I feel morally obligated to do my best to serve your kid. But then I can’t take my kid on vacation. I have no desire to be a martyr. I want to be paid fairly and I ask for the rate I deserve. But when families tell me they can’t afford it I believe them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what you mean by price gouging? How much are you paying? I also find it absurd that people have no problem paying a hair dresser with no college weekly $250, yet they will balk at the price of my professional SLP services to help their child communicate with them when I have a masters degree and many, many years of clinical experience and I charge half that rate!

I think it stems from the weekly bills. DS sees a therapist that is $100/week. So that's $400/month. He's 15 now and life is much easier. But when he was young, I was paying an SLP, a therapist, and an OT each week. It's not that one provider is too much. It's that combined, with all the recommended services, it becomes cost and time prohibitive. I'm not paying my hairdresser $250/week.

This! That PP with a master's degree sounds clueless.

It's the relentless amount of therapy and how they can add up to hundreds of dollars a week with no end in sight.

I’m both a SN provider and the mom of a kid with SN and pricey therapies, so I’ve been on both sides of the issue. The costs are relentless and out of reach for so many people. That is absolutely true.

That doesn’t make a professional charging a reasonable rate for their expertise price gouging. It makes our education and health systems irresponsible and ineffective - families shouldn’t have to pay for their kid to be able to speak, go to school, read.

I charge $110 an hour and given the logistics, prep time, etc for the service I provide I can only fit in 15 sessions a week, max, though it works out to at least 35 hours of work a week. I’m trying to figure out how to pay the mortgage and buy my kid a new winter coat, not bathing in caviar and champagne.

This exactly. I want our school systems to be better and provide better services and our insurance/health systems to be better and provide affordable care for services that aren't covered in school. This is the problem. Well. That and "professionals" who aren't who they say they are or don't provide the appropriate services.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious what you mean by price gouging? How much are you paying? I also find it absurd that people have no problem paying a hair dresser with no college weekly $250, yet they will balk at the price of my professional SLP services to help their child communicate with them when I have a masters degree and many, many years of clinical experience and I charge half that rate!

I think it stems from the weekly bills. DS sees a therapist that is $100/week. So that's $400/month. He's 15 now and life is much easier. But when he was young, I was paying an SLP, a therapist, and an OT each week. It's not that one provider is too much. It's that combined, with all the recommended services, it becomes cost and time prohibitive. I'm not paying my hairdresser $250/week.

I see families drop money on vacations, cars, clothes then balk at paying a professional for their services. I'm a professional and I get offended when a family who can afford it asks me to work for free because of the public interest/need of their child. What about my own kids' needs? I need to work to pay for those. These parents don't work for free, why do they expect me to? Who pays my bills?

The thing is - the reluctance to pay stems from the fact that with a few exceptions, we don’t really know if what you are doing is going to be worth it. A lot of us just feel like we “should” do it, and we all have a line where it is no longer worth it but maybe that vacation (where our kid just gets to be a kid) is worth it.

Oh gosh - I’m not pp but the other SN provider. Then please, just don’t do the therapy. Don’t ask me to drop my rate or provide it for free. I often say yes, because I believe you can’t afford the service and I feel morally obligated to do my best to serve your kid. But then I can’t take my kid on vacation. I have no desire to be a martyr. I want to be paid fairly and I ask for the rate I deserve. But when families tell me they can’t afford it I believe them.

1000 times yes from the other SN provider. If you don't value my services, do us both a favor and just don't hire me. But please do not hire me then disregard my advice and complain that you are not happy, or that I didn't do enough for you. I'm not a miracle worker and don't always get my clients the results they want. But many times when I don't, it's because the parents didn't follow my advice. Whose fault is that? Also don't hire me if you're going to dispute the charge, complain about the bills etc. My rates are reasonable and lower than competitors, priced that way intentionally to be as low as I can given my expenses and need to make a living. I'm not in this field for the money, there are a lot of ways I could make much more elsewhere. I don't think people in this field are out to rip anyone off.