A little background on myself and how this blog came to be. I have been working with the special needs population for about 6 years now. I started professionally working as a respite and habilitation worker. There are many who maybe unfamiliar with those terms and that is yet another reason that has pushed me to write a blog. I worked in the home's of families that had special needs and there is where my passion was seeded, blossomed and grew. I worked as a service provider while I was attending school to be a Speech Language Pathologist. I have worked in both the school and the clinical settings and found that I had more 1:1 time with the parents/caretakers in the clinic setting which increases the probability of care-over therefore real success. It is there I noticed that I was forever talking to parents about the same things, I further noticed that the majority of these parents all recently received a diagnosis for their children. These parents all had similar stories and a few things in common like; recently received a diagnosis and received and an overwhelming amount of information from the doctor. While the Doctor keeps talking they are stuck at the doctors words "your child has _______", fill in the blank. Many times these parents are lost and are just glad they have made it to their first appointment. After the shock of the diagnosis there can be a grieving period (better defined as a cycle) and eventually acceptance and a desire to know what they can be doing to help their child. These parents now have a stranger coming into their home called a Support Coordinator and as far as the parents knowledge this "stranger" is just coming to check up on the child. What the parents don't know is that the this person is coming to coordinate support for their child, hence their name "support coordinator". But what support do they offer? The parents don't know. The support coordinators live by a strict "don't ask don't tell" policy. Which begs the question, "what services are out there for my child?" and "what do I have to do to get these services?" It is through my occupations that I learned all about these things I will blog about but it wasn't until recently I have had my very own support coordinator for my youngest son who was born very premature and is now receiving different therapies of his own. I haven't been able to tell if our support coordinator is a good one or if she just is good to us because I know what she is supposed to be doing and hold her accountable.
If any of this fits your personal story or a story of a friend of yours then this blog is for you. It is intended to answer those questions above and any and all other questions that parents have that support coordinators can't answer or give you the run around. This blog is meant to serve as a guide for parents with special needs and designed to help parents effectively navigate "the system" by empowering parents with information. That is why the blog is entitled the Special Needs Hidden Handbook (snhiddenhandbook).
If this is the kind of blog/information you have been looking for than please look on the right hand column and refer to the other blogs/categories for information that may be helpful to you.
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