Posted by admin | Posted in Mommyhood, hypotonia | Posted on 20-09-2009
Tags: early intervention, physical therapy, therapist
Luke’s physical therapy has been on hiatus for almost 6 weeks now. Our therapist had her baby and has been on maternity leave. Of course, she needs her leave to recover and spend time with her baby, I’m not faulting her for that. She did tell us before she went on leave though, that she was taking three weeks completely off, then she would have some patients come to her house for another 3 weeks. This hasn’t happened yet, which I don’t blame her for.
I am really blaming our early intervention group for not having their act together. They knew the PT was pregnant and would eventually have her baby. They don’t have a back-up therapist, since there is not another one in our area willing to go into the homes to do therapy. I would have gladly gone to a facility to get our therapy, but that option was never even presented to us by our coordinator. We haven’t even heard from our coordinator since we started therapy in May! It doesn’t seem like she is doing her job to me.
Luckily for us, Luke’s condition probably won’t suffer very much by not having the therapy all these weeks, especially since we have been working with him a lot on our own. It does make me a little angry for the other children though, who have worse conditions and will probably fall behind or regress to a certain degree.
I am grateful that our state does offer this program, free of charge, but it is frustrating to know that they apparently don’t care all that much for the children they are helping. Shouldn’t there have been some better planning involved???
I am seriously considering contacting our coordinator this week to voice my concerns. I know it’s probably too late, since our PT will be back soon, but the way E.I. handled this is just unacceptable! I’m just afraid that if I come across as bitchy, the coordinator will relay this back to our PT. I’m in no way trying to get her in trouble or make her come back to work before she is ready.
I agree with you about ECI. We were supposed to finally start Speech Therapy last week(as the old speech therapist quit 2 months ago) and the speech therapist called me 20 minutes AFTER our scheduled appointment to say that she can’t come. Apparrently speech was for some reason not added into his services and she will have to come out again to get this added before he can start. It is a very frustrating system to deal with and I wish you lots of luck and patience.:)
I am all to familiar with Early Steps..We have been waiting on Vision therapy to get started with no luck yet, and when I call they assure me it takes TIME..However my patience is wearing out..
Thanks for the comments Candice and Sebrina. I know it is frustrating! At least we know we are not alone in this though.
Best of luck to you both and keep me posted:)
It’s frustrating for the therapists, too. (Who are not usually administrators of EI programs.)
There.are.not.enough.therapists.
I don’t have any means of quickly producing competent additional people. But if the ‘system’ administration did not work against having an organized and efficient caseload – it would help.
Hoping your little boy, the new mommy-therapist and you all have a good reunion. Soon.
How frustrating! Government organizations – doesn’t matter what country you’re in they are all so backward! Really hope they sort it out for you soon.