Pennsylvania and services?

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Hi all! I am not sure where to begin. I am so happy I found this group!

I am researching services in PA for children with autism. I may be getting married in about a year and my wife would be moving to Pa from out of state (Az) to Pa. Her son is 10 yrs old and autistic. I thought maybe a support group or message board could be a good place to start.I need to research thing such as social security, aid, medicaid and what agency handles services in PA, what would need to be done to qualify/move from out of state, what is the lag time between states, what is needed (Doctor's note, etc?), families to speak with who participate, etc. I know in Az, he gets RESPIT and Habilatate, in addition to various forms of therapy.

Thanks so much for listening and maybe if anyone has advice?
Thanks!

I don't know if we have any active members from PA. If you don't get any responses from people local to you, I would suggest checking to see if there is a local Facebook group for specifics. I would guess that for Federal services like SSDI, that it could be transferred fairly easily, but your fiancee should call the current office she works with now and verify if that is so, and find out what the procedure and lead time needs to be.

Other things will go through your state/county/school district so when you look on Facebook, the more local the Facebook group the better.

I'm north of Pittsburgh. I don't know where to tell you to look-- I don't know where you are, plus services are something I've worked pretty hard to avoid. After growing up in West Virginia and then living in Arkansas, it seems like PA just LOVES to get people into "services." The more, the better.

I don't know if they're any GOOD or not, but I'm willing to bet that if you start making lots of phone calls and asking lots of questions and are very very patient with navigating the massive, unhelpful, rude, and borderline incompetent bureaucracy (and don't get angry with their assumptions of your own incompetence) you can find something.