2 months after asd dx and still no real help.......

[mamadadawahwah]

Its been over two months since my son was diagnosed with asd. To date he has received 5 hours of speech therapy and thats it. I wanted to ask you who have toddlers with the dx what kind of therapy you get or are paying for?? It seems not much is going to happen for my son unless i dig deep in the pocket, do it myself or wait until he is school age.

Does anyone know what the best to expect is, regarding help for a toddler?? Its absolutely ridiculous. He wont get O.T. till this February. Music therapy may or may not happen. Speech therapy is rather useless at one hour a week (my son is non verbal)

I thought there was supposed to be a National Autism Plan in place. Obviously its not working. I and I am sure, many many others are being left in the lurch with young and not so young children. Its absolutely horrendous. To compensate i take my son to mother toddler groups (he is yet too young for a playgroup). I just feel all this precious time is going by. I enlisted the help of an ABA specialist who came to assess what I was doing. At £50.00 per hour, however, this is really difficult too.

Ok, i know i should know this already, but where do you begin with the statementing process. Dosent ones child have to be assessed by an edu. psych first?

You don't have to wait until a child is 2 before requesting an assessment for statementing - dd was referred at 18 mnths by our portage worker. Good job too as it still took until a month ago to get her statement through (she is nearly 3 now).

Mamadada... lots of good advice here from davros, socci et al re: ABA. We are doing a very p/t programme with dd and although we haven't seen amazing results there is definite progress. It is hard work though and agree with davros that a good idea to not do too much as a parent... I am doing too much !

And you are right .... it is nobody's job or responsibility to help us. I was shocked by that too initially .

Just another question on statementing. How can my son be statemented if he has not been assessed by anyone educationally or psychologically? On what would they base the statement? My son does not go to playschool or nursery or anything. He hasnt seen an Ed Pscyh. Or am i not thinking here? Do i request the statement process and THEN all this happens?

I think they will ask an educational psychologist to see him once you've written the letter. You can send copies of all your reports e.g. paeds etc and any other info you have that you feel is relevant. Do you have an area SENCO who you could contact to help you start the process?

You request an assessment to see whether they will statement. If they decide to go ahead they assess to see if they will statement. If they do decide to statement then they get further reports. It's why it takes so long.