Today we had our appeal with Early Intervention. First I want to clarify the whole therapy issue because I think it has been confusing. Our insurance has approved therapy, but that's through either an outpatient center or a home health agency. So they have not been a problem (although finding a therapist to staff it has been a problem). However, we are also involved with Early Intervention, a federal program that provides therapy to children age 0-3 with a developmental delay. Our thinking all along has been that they are not providing enough service to Edison and that he is eligible for so much more. To qualify for this program you have to have a 25% delay in 2 or more areas or a 33% delay in one area. Well Edison has at least that in all areas and so we feel like he should be receiving maximum service. Their stance has been that we can "catch up later" if we need to which is unacceptable since he is at such a critical stage of development. So we requested this meeting today.

We met with our current therapist, our service coordinator, their supervisor and our social worker from the hospital was on speaker phone as our advocate. They came out swinging with the "developmental model" vs. "medical model" which seems to be their party line. Our social worker was a great advocate in terms of what she and the team at the hospital feels that he needs. Martin and I then advocated for where we think he is and what we think he needs. In general the outcome was good. We are having an occupational therapy evaluation tomorrow and they will determine if he needs their services. If he doesn't, then we have requested that he at least receive more hours a week with our current therapist. Then on Friday he will be evaluated by a special education teacher who specifically works with chidren who are blind or deaf and she will help address some of Edison's vison issues and how these impact development. They will also start monitoring him with a speech therapist who will see him once a month as we move towards oral feeding. The downside here is that speech therapist is the supervisor that was present at the meeting today and she is something else. We felt that she was very argumentative and was confrontive with our social worker. Anyway, the outcome was positive for Edison and that's all that matters.