Trying not to be discouraged

This morning I had the official "Intake" meeting with Supported Child Development. Right now, Karter is followed by the Infant Development Program. This covers him from birth to 3 years old. Within the same agency is Supported Child Development, they pick up at age 3 and follow the kids through preschool and up to age 6.

Although we are "in the program" per say, it seems that Supported Child Development only follows a child if they go to preschool. As you know, we have registered Karter for preschool and his needs allow him to qualify for additional support. The issue that I became aware of this morning is that he now goes on a wait list for that funding and it turns out that it does not look like there will be enough for him for this upcoming year. Apparently, funding is given out to 4 year old preschool children first, then daycare children, then three year old preschool children.

To top that, if he is not in preschool, he no longer receives support while we are on the wait list. He will remain seeing his physiotherapist and speech therapist, which are SO important (they are actually out of a different agency), but a consultant that oversees Karters case and puts us in touch with all the other services available (such as occupational therapy and others) will not be provided until he gets funding dollars for preschool, which from what she is telling me, could be September of 2010!

You can understand how discouraging this is. Although Karter may developmentally not be 3, he is 3 in actual age in July, which allows him to be eligible to go to preschool in September. Without a support worker, he will not be able to go. For us, we feel like the social exposure for him would be of great benefit for him. Motivation from other children can be such a key thing in development. We all know this by watching both our typical and not typical children, they learn from each other. And Karter is naturally social, so we want to hone in on that skill and provide for him the same experiences that Paige had to build relationships and skills through preschool.

I asked the coordinator of the program if there were other options or programs to receive funding for a one to one worker (obviously we cannot afford to pay a worker our self and pay the tuition for preschool on top of it). Basically, our option is to pay out of our pocket or wait on the list until funding is released.

So I ask for your prayers, we need a miracle here. Somehow, we need more funding dollars to be released so that Karter would be able to receive support for September. Once again, we find ourselves in a real state of limbo - a place I really hate! It can be August or even September before they fully know how much funding they have and who it will be released to; so once again, we wait!