Long term care - the interview

A week after my son's third birthday, the day arrived for his long term care interview.  I didn't sleep much the night before and was nervous to say the least.  This was an important day for all of us and would decide how our next year of therapy played out for my son.

The questions posed by the interviewer were nothing out of the ordinary.  The questions focused on whether or not my son had mastered various milestones for each age group  (3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 1 year, 2 year, etc).  What was interesting was the fact that the questions (newly distributed that year according to the interviewer) focused mainly on his physical development.  Yes, my son's ability to roll, crawl, walk, pick up a block, properly hold a crayon are all important in determining his need for future therapy but, in my opinion, just as important was and is his ability to express himself and his needs and desires.  Yet, there was only maybe one or two questions related to how he communicated with us or others.  Apparently, all the experts decided that the communication/expression aspect of a child merited little regard with respect to development.

Well, despite my opinions - which I did express, the interviewer couldn't do anything except go through the questions she had.   I answered them to the best of my abilities, keeping in mind that unless he had mastered a particular skill (i.e. he was doing it all the time with no problems) my answer to each question of whether or not he could do something was to be no.  I think this caused my interviewer to raise her eyebrows a couple of time when I answered no at the beginning of the questioning but so be it.

I managed to make it through the 45 minute or so interview without bursting into tears (although, I came close once) and all we had to do after she was gone was wait for her to enter the scores into the system back at her office and let us know whether or not he qualified.  The wait was excruciating but thankfully not long.  We found out by the end of the week that our son had qualified for long term care, barely - like literally within a couple of points but he qualified.  It was such a huge sigh of relief and then I did shed tears.

Thereafter, the transition was pretty easy.  We were assigned a new support coordinator and the therapies continued as normal.  At my first meeting with the new support coordinator she informed me that aside from the therapies my son was already receiving, we were now eligible for respite and habilitation.  I did not know what either of those services were but I learned that respite meant that someone would come in and watch my son and give me a break.  Woo hoo!  Habilitation meant that someone would come to our home and also work with my son on daily routine stuff.  I have not had a chance to start either service yet but am looking forward to it.  We were also given supplemental/secondary insurance.   This was something new because we did not have any additional insurance under the state plan.