How do services work after age 3?

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Generally speaking, how do the services work once my son leaves our county's early intervention program and moves onto the school districts at age 3? How does it work if there are no pre-schools designed to accommodate an autistic child in our area? I would really like for my son to be in a preschool environment, at least for some of the time.

Thank you.

Where I live, they must find an appropriate school, even if it is out of district. They should give you a list of schools to visit, and then you can choose the one you think is the best fit!

good luck

Where I live the school district has to take over at 3 and early intervention helps with the transition process. My son is 3 on March 10 and we are in the process right now. We have either had our family resource coordinator or his EI teacher attend all the transition meetings with us which has made it easy. My son will likely continue with his private speech and ot though but we do know he will most likely get placed in a preschool classroom which is what we want since we want him to be able to handle kindergarten without a meltdown. The transition process has been reasonably easy. The paperwork from early intervention's evaluation qualified him with the state department of developmental disabilities without a diagnosis. He spend most of the school's evaluation having a meltdown but we will find out next week what the school's plan is. I am hoping they do place him in preschool. As far as we can tell he is normal intelligence but his sensory issues are severe according to his OT.

My youngest just turned 3 at the end of Jan. She was receiving services for delayed speech and gross motor, and some autistic traits through ECI before that. We just transitioned her to the school district, and she now is in PPCD (public preschool for kids with disabilities -- that's what they call it here in Texas) at the same elementary school her two older siblings attend. She goes every day for afternoon half days, and gets speech and PT at school. We are also doing private OT for her separately. They have 12 kids in her classroom, ages 3-6, with a teacher and two aides. She even rides the bus with carseat and seat belts that does pick up and drop off at our front door (she thinks she is so cool to be able to ride the bus like big brother and sister). The transition process was pretty easy...I took her to the school to be evaluated by the school psychologist, speech therapist and PPCD teacher, ECI forwarded all her reports from them, then later we had a meeting to set up her IEP. She turned three a couple of days after the IEP and started school that next week. She really loves it, and is doing great!

Great, thank you for the replies, it's helping me to get a better idea of how the system works.

At the urging of one of my daughter's VB therapists, we got her into a nursery school environment before she turned 3, and her VB therapist did her hours there (time in naturalistic environment). It was at the same school her brother was going to. Then the therapist wrote a recommendation that this was the most appropriate placement for her and I requested that the SD provide her with a 1:1 while she attended pre/nursery school. (I paid for the school, but the SD paid for the 1:1...her same EI therapist). We then slowly worked on transitioning her to full-time, even though her therapy hours were only for part of the time. She did most of nursery school at part-time with most of the hours with a 1:1. She did a year of pre-k as a full-time student with a part-time 1:1, and then when she started kindergarten, she was fully mainstreamed and no longer needed her 1:1. By the end of pre-k, her 1:1 was nearly totally hands-off with her and spent much of her time teaching the teachers how to work effectively with her. She even spent some time with the kindergarten teacher at the end of the pre-k year.

I do not believe this is a "usual" kind of set-up, but it worked well for my daughter. At first the school district looked like it was going to object, but then I pointed out that 1) a part-time VB therapist is cheaper than sending her to a special preschool and 2) as a property owner in the district, they were already getting my money, and I was not asking them to pay for her private school. Once I put it that way, they seemed to agree.

To OP: Where do you live?

I live in Arkansas. The way it worked for us was this: We went through the Developmental Disabilities Services, DDS. There are different requirements for services depending on age. Birth to age 3 had the lowest threshold for services. We weren't with them for long as his first testing was at 2 1/2, but I believe the child only had to have one moderate delay.

3-5 had the next lowest. Something like one severely delayed area or two moderately delayed areas. I think there was a way to have services covered directly under the education system at this age, but I'm not sure how that works. He did have an IEP at this age at the service provider. Our DDS caseworker was amazing, and helpful, and we always knew that if we were having difficulties with referrals or services that we could go to her and she would make things happen. The preschool knew this as well.

5+ had a much higher threshold for DDS services, because that is the age they plan for the school to take over things that aren't going to be lifelong issues. My son didn't have an autism diagnosis at that age, and though he had several diagnoses like Sensory Integration Disorder, Developmental Coordination Disorder (which went with a 3rd percentile fine motor score), and a delay in self help skills, he wasn't delayed enough to keep his DDS services without a diagnosis of ASD, cerebral palsy, MR, or Down Syndrome. I believe he was well within the requirements with his fine motor skills, but I think it was something like he had to show less than 5th percentile on 3 areas for DDS services without a recognized diagnosis, and his speech and self help weren't testing low enough. Now with the diagnosis, he is back with DDS.

School wise we had a fairly terrible time. The school district we live in file 13'd my son's test results and wouldn't even speak to me about an IEP. "He doesn't have a diagnosis on the list, therefore he doesn't get an IEP. No, we /don't/ do IEPs for Other Health Impaired, that's just ridiculous." We used the school choice option to go to a different district, although that wouldn't be an option now as they've ended that program. The other school worked with me at least a little. We had to squeak in with a diagnosis of a fluency disorder (he'd stutter occasionally when he was tired) in order to get the OT services that he really needed badly without a fight. There response was "We don't do OT in Kindergarten unless the kid also has a diagnosis or a speech disorder." Made no sense whatsoever to me, but their speech therapist was willing to say he needed speech for a semester to get us into the OT, so it worked out. After that first semester we never had school based speech again, but they never fussed about the OT, I guess because he already had a service plan. Even after we started homeschooling, we still received OT through the school's funding for another two years. He tested out for six months, and instead of going through messing with them I just went through the state insurance. If I hadn't had that, I would have had to go through the school again, which I imagine would have been a large pain in the backside.

The DDS case management services aren't income based, and they aren't dependent on the school. Also, in my state, you get a tax refund on your state return if your kid has a developmental disability diagnoses. It's not huge or anything, but every little bit helps. It also allows you to be on a waiting list for respite care if you need it, and qualify for an ASD specialized summer camp and several weekend camps throughout the year which also offer some respite. There is an insurance program to cover things like ABA for people who are over the income limits for Medicaid and the other state funded insurance programs for kids. They also coordinate the planning for transition to adult services including life skills and employment skills (although I can't comment directly on those as my son isn't that old yet).

I don't know if other states have programs like these or not. I do know that they don't really advertise them here. We found the DDS services because we were trying to get him tested and his doctor refused to send referrals.

We are trying to figure this out too. We are working with STEP but they don't seem to be doing anything for us. I had our doctor do the referral for Speech and OT. I also just contacted the local school system to find out what they offer for services. I really need to call STEP and find out exactly what they are suppose to be doing for our family, so far it has been a lot of nothing except the Evaluation.