Getting affordable outside evals. Was: Opinion

[Guest guest]

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> I think I just clicked as to why I've never pushed for Dylan to get

an�official diagnosis outside�of the school.� It's because the school

has never argued with me that anything was wrong with my kid (except

for that dumb Spec Ed director who said he didn't need to be in

Special Ed, but didn't suggest we change anything when everyone in the

room looked at her like she was from planet Mars!)�

I think you hit it right on the nail, . In our case, it wasn't

that they didn't see something was wrong, but that every person

thought it was something different. They thought everything from ED

to ADHD to genius-who-knows-more-what-he-needs-than-those-around-him,

and, of course, evil, spoiled child. Not a single one ever

guessed autism. After I figured it out and was describing symptoms to

them--they didn't believe me.

A lot of the problem in some schools is not being able to get past the

general ed or lower-level special ed staff to someone who has enough

training to recognize the reality of what is going on. All the

teachers and administrators we had in the elementary grades refused to

pass the problem on to special ed when they couldn't figure out what

to do. They chose to armchair psych instead. And it took me awhile

to figure out the legalities of all of it myself so I could push them

past that. When I would describe his symptoms as we were seeing them,

they looked at me like I was nuts and proceeded to automatically

dismiss anything we said. But that all changed in jr. high (7th

grade) when we moved to secondary-level staff. They were a lot more

thoughtful, appear a lot more educated, and we have been moving

through the preliminaries. By the end of this school year we should

know whether they are going to be able to seriously come up with

something effective or not. He's going into 9th grade (4-yr high school)!

Anyway, I'm digressing. What I wanted to say to all of you having

problems getting school evaluations... I assume you are relying on

school evaluations because you don't know anywhere affordable and/or

highly qualified to go yourself.

To find a place that takes insurance and that your insurance will find

acceptable usually means going to the nearest large children's

hospital, sometimes a large hospital that has a large children's

hospital within it. I live in a very large metropolitan area, and

this is the ONLY place you can go to get high quality autism testing

where they take insurance. As you might expect, they have very long

waiting lists--up to a year.

If you do something like use a neurologist or developmental

pediatrician, you need to make sure they meet the school district's

criteria. This seems like a no-brainer, however, just using my school

district for example, they MUST have either a school diagnostician or

school psychologist license. That actually is my school district's

only criteria. Now my son's neuropsych at the neurobehavioral clinic

and the psychiatrist at the autism clinic are way beyond that level

(the school diagnostician/psych licenses are masters-level), but the

hospital they work at makes sure all their staff have these licenses

since they know the school districts require them.

Also, since most large children's hospitals are research hospitals and

often connected to medical schools, consider you may be able to get in

on a research study or using the medical school's educational funds.

We ended up getting both our neuropsych eval and autism eval for

free--one through educational funding because the neuropsych wanted

his assisting postdoc fellow to get fully paid and one through a

research study. ALTHOUGH, we had to have our insurance in order to

get in the door. They wanted to be able to send us to any department

in the hospital that they saw fit and other parts of the eval were

regular pay. Also, they send full paperwork to the insurance company

even though nothing is owed for information purposes.

Anyway, I hope this is helpful to those of you having a hard time

getting school evals (or meaningful school evals).

Ruth