Wow! Wonderful story - severely disabled girl 'talks' for the first time using laser eye movement tracker

[mabanana]

beautiful little girl

Can't say anymore really

absolutly amazing....how that will change her world!!

awww how wonderful
shame about the dreadfull wording of the report.

awwwwwwwwww.
Yeah, I cringed at 'handicapped' and now I feel jealous that we are still waiting for dd's communication aid and despite the fact she will need what this girl has, the LEA wont fund it.

they don't fund them, you have to buy them. dd is going to be reassesed for a VOCA and I am kind of dreading it as it will cost thousands.
yet if she just needed an op she would get that for free.

what! I assumed they paid for these things? The Liberator 14 I want for dd is £8000!!!!

well the people I know who have them have paid for them. I hope I am wrong but i thought it was something you had to fund raise for.
I will ask her SALT next week.

This Mytobii eyetracker is the one that ds is getting hopefully!

communication services have given the go ahead and said he should have it as its the only one he can work, he cant hit a switch etc as he only has useful consistent control over his eyes.

every time he has used it so far he has been fab turning pages and spelling out words etc but keeps making it say i love pizza, i love chocolate, can i have the television on, please? no "i love you" for me!

Glittery, that made me teary too! It's wonderful. Just snuck a look at him, what a looker. That beautiful face doesn't need to spell out I love you, you know it already.

thanks fbb!

i am a bit flushed actually....ds staying with his gran tonight and i have a rapidly decreasing bottle of wine!

I spent hours getting funding for communication aids some of the children I worked with (don't work as slt anymore).

Since the CAP project ended a couple of years ago, I imagine it is even harder to get.

My Health Authority eventually gave me an annual budget of about £8000 for paed aac, don't know if they still have it and I don't know of any other areas who did.

Your slt should be able to help with organisations but Health and Education may part fund. The end of financial year is often a good time as pots of money are often found that need to be spent before end of march. Always write/speak to the managers in charge of the money, many slt's do not have access to budgets, so badger the right people!

Have just done a search and found this info:

here

some extra info here

Bear in mind that introducing aac systems also require lots of extra hours by parents, teachers and slt's in order to be successful, so it's not all about money for buying the aid. (in fact the most successful children were those who's parents learnt how to program their systems)

Sorry if I'm teaching you all to suck eggs and you know all this already

Hope to see you all in the papers soon being told by your dc's that they love you. Lovely article[waterygrin emoticon]

thanks for that, very interesting.

my SALT is crap. When dd started school I was hoping we'd get the school SALT who is fantatsic and knows all about devices. But no, the useless woman has stalked me to school.
I don't know how dd will access a devise although she can use a headswitch. Her eye control isn't great and one keeps going into a squint (and has she been seen about this? Has she fuck [angry})
I am angry and tearful and afraid.

wea re lucky at dd's school(sn) they have it all set in place and actually mentioned having her reassed before I remembered.

I've asked dh if we can move to an area that has better provisionf or severely disabled children but he doesn't want to pull the boys out of school.
I am considering moving myself, just me and dd. What else can I do? I haven't any money for this stuff. Now another firend has just told me her dd is getting powerchair driving lessons. At 4. My dd has never even been assessed for a powerchair. Her standing frame broke last week and is still broekn, its taken 6 months for the new harness on her chair to arrive, the PCT have stopped funding G-tubes. I am exhausted fighting all this and being a total failure

it does seem to be down to where you live. people say why do you stay in %%%%% and I say because it has good services for sn.
my freind lives in a different part of the county and has terrible trouble. she can't get a powered chair, they only allow one chair. at that time I had 3.
same with nappies and respite. so I just put up with the hills.

what a lovely story!!! The people that develop these machines are truly genius, just amazing.

You shoulde be able to request a`power chair assessment fairly easily, may take a while though! The criteria here is pretty strict eye sight must be good upto 20 metres, no significant seizures, and although I have seen powerchairs with head switches, criteria here was the ability to operate a joystick, all rules my daughter out but that's no big surprise. Getting a aac should be fairly straight forward in theory once you get it written in a statement. Grring with you though, things shouldn't be so hard

powerchairs are only done here for kids who can use a hand joystick. DD is too disabled
Her statement does say objectives ' to learn to use alternative forms of communication such as VOCAs' I'm wondering if that covers it?

I think it needs to be written in a certain section of their statement - section 3? (but so long ago that I wrote statements, I can't remember which).

I'm sure one of the 'in-the-know' parents will know. I think it's the bit that describes them/their needs. That means that Education are less able to wriggle out of contributing (but of course, doesn't mean they will!)

To be honest unless your LEA are throwing money around I think you need the exact model, plus quantified salt written into section 3

we got quantified SALT. 25 pathetic hours a year.

Is it written how often each session should be and how long? with who present?

no. Just 25 hours one to one a year although out of that 25 hours must come planning meetings etc.
Its the max severely disabled children get. But if you have a slight stammer you get SALT every week

Presumably she also has communication objectives written into her IEP that are worked on in class?