Prayer for Therapy

Hey friends! It has been an insane weekend for sure! Darby's party was on Saturday, and I've been non-stop since then. I've been so busy and flighty, that I actually completely forgot about a make-up therapy session we had planned for today! I was shocked when his therapist came to our door... it all rushed back into my head and I ran and woke darby up from his nap... oops! It ended up working out just fine :o)

Some of you have heard about our dilemma, but its such a new dilemma, that I haven't been able to tell everyone. Its hard to explain, but I'll try my best...

Darby gets his physical and occupational therapy from a center that specializes in children with long term care and special needs, and even has therapists who specialize in infants. This place gets its funding solely from Regional Center, a federally funded center that helps children with disabilities get help that they need. There are so many kids that go to Regional center, that his therapy center doesn't even take insurance! There is even a waiting list to get therapy! Anywho, so thats the base of the pyramid...

California is in a budget crisis. Its stupid and ridiculous and I try not to get too worked up about it... SO because CA has no money, they cut millions of dollars of funding to the first start childrens programs... including Regional Center's funding. This caused Regional Centers everywhere to start cutting their budgets. At first, they were just making it ridiculously hard for people to get started in the program of funded therapy... then they cut respite care and other features... then they decided that all children who were 'high risk' were to be evaluated and if they had a disability of less than 33%, their funding would be cut.... All of these things were not great. Lots of kids are now without funding and without therapy. That alone broke my heart. But we also thought that we were safe and we just got by those cuts.

Then thursday came... last week. The owner of his therapy center came to me and told me some bad news. At each child's annual review with Regional Center (when they turn 1 yr old, etc), the parents are going to be required to show proof of insurance. If we can show that we have medical insurance that would cover darby's physical and occupational therapy, no matter where that may be, then they would be cutting our funding. The owner herself was shocked at this phone call she had just received today with this news and said we'd be the first family having to go through this, since darby's birthday was the first week of November.

One might think, oh well, not a big deal, considering we have great insurance! Right!? Well, no. Thats almost the problem! Infant type therapy is very hard to find. The places that insurance will send us to (and did send us to in the past, before Regional Center) can't handle long term special needs infants. They deal more with sprains and broken bones, and getting back to work! Infant specialists are just not found through insurance... for whatever reason.

So we are attempting to do everything that we can. There is no precedent, so all things are potentially fair game. Doctors letters, therapists letters, anything that might help us plead our case to Regional Center, we are working hard to get. I have found one legal loophole that will give us 1-2 months of therapy, paid, if we get to the point of a full blown denial of funding. We have also spoke with our pediatrician, who is so shocked that this is happening. He was upset to hear about that, since he said, "All children with special needs we have refereed to Regional Center, there aren't other options". He has spoken with our insurance and has started the referral game. We'll see where they would send us, and if its not adequate for Darby, that can be another plea we can use against Regional Center. We've priced private therapists, and looked into other centers... but they are expensive and darby is just still too young.

Darby's therapy center is absolutely scrambling to make contracts with insurance centers so they can still get children therapy, but its going to take time... and they haven't been able to make a deal with our insurance, so we are working on a possible private contract with them.

We're praying and we just ask if you might consider doing the same. None of this caught God off guard, although it caught us. Darby's needs will still get met, just maybe not the way we thought they would. I also have the privilege of knowing how to do most of darby's therapy programs with him, and if it comes to it, our therapists will work hard to teach me what I'm going to need to do on my own in the coming months.

What breaks my heart more, is how wide spread this is... hundreds of children... HUNDREDS! Thousands?!?! These children are going to be denied funding, sent somewhere without adequate care (by their insurance), and possibly suffer developmental delays that will now be with them for life. It is so hard to think about how money that was going to help children to crawl, walk, talk, and function in normal society, is now being taken away for other purposes that just seem political.

This funding was a huge blessing, to us and to others. We'll never take it for granted ever again!