Regional Center, Part 2

Against all our expectations, Sadie was approved for PT assistance from the North Valley Regional Center. Hooray! But not so fast.

Both the assessor who did the workup on Sadie a few weeks ago, and Joy, her physical therapist, warned me that the Regional Center has become a place of last resort -- a resource for people who don't have health insurance, or whose plans don't cover things like PT. Hurt by budget cuts, they've essentially become useless for families whose insurance plans already cover PT in some aspect, and we're lucky enough to fall into this category.

In order to qualify Sadie for in-home PT through the Regional Center, we'd first need to petition to our insurance company that in-home would benefit her more than the current out-of-office PT she has now. Only then, if that plea were rejected, would the Regional Center then come in and potentially help out (although we'd first have to champion her case with them.)

This might become a point of concern for us, were Sadie still having troubles with weekly PT. Fortunately, over the last two weeks she's radically improved. She no longer cries and throws tantrums, and although she doesn't much care for Joy (the mean lady who has the cool toys but won't just let her sit and play with them like she wants), she'll cooperate with Joy's attempts to get her to move around. Two Thursdays ago I sat with them while she practiced walking; last Thursday I snuck out into the waiting room mid-session and she didn't even notice.

Joy, who works with a lot of referrals from the Regional Center, has a lot of irritation towards their new policies along with the ever-growing pile of bureaucratic yellow tape that applicants now must wade through. After our last session, she told me frankly that she suspected by the time we set up PT through the Center, Sadie would already be on the tail end of her PT. She feels that Sadie's moving along at a great pace, and I agree.

Talking to our case worker today made me sad, because she really sounded regretful that they most likely wouldn't be able to help Sadie to any great degree, and all I wanted to do was reassure her that her regret was misplaced. We're lucky in many ways: we have a good insurance plan that has covered her PT sessions. We've seen improvement rapid enough to see for ourselves that the PT is working, and to know that within a few months, she'll catch up to other kids her age. We also know that if worse comes to worst and Sadie does require further therapy, we have the financial resources to cope with it.

While the case worker gave me the option of bringing Sadie in for an eval (number two, if you're keeping track), I ultimately told her that I would not be scheduling one at this point. Instead, I'm going to do more of what has been working: giving her reasons to be active every day, helping her practice her skills, taking her to the park and to baby gyms and bribing her with goldfish crackers.

The video below is footage I took today. Sometimes I have to remind myself that four or five weeks ago, she couldn't crawl four feet across the room to pick up a toy.