Turning 3 & Long Term Care part 1

As I already posted when my son turned 3 he started pre-school.  But there was another aspect of his turning 3 that was not as easy.

From the time we started with services through the state we were told that once our son turned 3 the funding would be switched from the state to federal funding.  Of course when didn't think much about it since 3 years old seemed so far away at the time but as he approached 3 in September, I became much more aware of what that meant.  As a person who likes to have some control, I had absolutely no control over the changes and that sent my stress level into overdrive.  There were many things I learned about the process of switching from state to federal assistance that I wished were outlined more clearly prior to the actual event.

First, two months before my son turned 3, I contacted our current support coordinator to request that he submit an application on our behalf for long term care.  I never saw the application and had nothing to do with it.  This was simply something our support coordinator did.  Although we talked about it for several months prior, I still had to call and remind our coordinator to submit the application.

Why two months before my son turned 3?  Well apparently the application process is a long one and it is better to start the process before my son turned 3 so there would be less potential of disruption in services versus starting the process at the time he turned 3.  Makes sense I suppose.  Of course, we still didn't know exactly how long the process was going to take and it was sort of a cat and mouse game because we were told we didn't want to submit an application too early.  As part of the process, an evaluation is required and we didn't want him evaluated before he turned three because there are apparently different or additional questions that is asked for a child who is 2 years + 1 day shy of 3 years old versus 3 years old.

Second, the funding for my son's services from the state ceased on his birthday.  And that meant, as far as the state was concerned, that we were no longer to receive any services on or after his birthday. What a nice birthday present for him.  There was absolutely no leeway as far as the state was concerned.  I was really surprised when my support coordinator told me this (in a nice way of course) and really felt like I had been punched.  My first reaction was, great - now what do we do?  We can't have the therapists come anymore because the state won't pay but we still didn't know when we would hear from the long term care people.  So my son would have his therapies disrupted for who knows how long?  This was frustrating to say the least!

Fortunately, I learned that the companies that the therapists worked for or the therapists themselves offered something called private pay.  As you can guess, it means that we pay them privately for the in between period when the state no longer supplied funding and my son had not qualified for long term care.  I wished I had learned about this prior to my son turning 3 but at least I learned that my son had an option and that his services could continue.  Of course, the cost of paying ourselves for several different therapies was daunting because even at a pro-rated fee the therapies are not cheap and we really didn't know how long we would have to do this.  In the end we decided that we would participate in private pay and hoped that my son would qualify for long term care sooner rather than later.