States with best Special Needs Programs

[sandwish]

We are currently living in WA and have been pretty happy with our special needs program. However, it's the only one I have ever experienced, only EI and preschool, and don't know what really defines a good/better program. My friend is in California and gets respite care for their child, I believe 20 or 40 hours a month. I called our state disability program and they said they would put us on a wait list 6000+ but there was no budget so being on the list didn't really mean anything.

We are thinking of moving out of state. Are there any resources/websites that can better tell us which states have better programs? Or what have been your experiences?

We will be needing special needs education / therapies / support throughout my child's life.

Thank in advance.

[Gena]

Can you share a little bit about the nature of your child's special needs? Even within a state it can vary a lot depending on if you are taking about physical disabilites, cognative disabilites, developmental disorders, etc.

Is there a certain region you are looking to move to?

Here's our expereince:

My son has autism as his primary disability and also has a visual imapirment. Our state (Ohio) is OK - better than some, not as good as others. Ohio does not mandate that insurance cover therapies for autism, so some will cover speech and OT and others don't. Our current insurance does not, but our previous one did. I don't think any cover ABA or other behavior therapy (except for the insurance military families have).

Ohio does have an Autism Scholarship Program, which lets parents opt out of the public school system and gives them $20K to use towards (state approved) autism services providers. Some school districts see this as competition and so they have created very good autism programs in their public school, as an attempt to keep the money in the public schools. Other school districts have found it easier to just encourage parents to take the scholarship and have cut their autism programs accordingly. Our school district has a great autism program within the public school, so we have placed DS there. He has wonderful teachers, therapists, and aides.

The Ohio Department of Education also uses slightly different definaitions of hearing impairment and vision impairment than the federal law. They are more detailed and include a wider range of issues. My son does not meet the federal definition of vision impairment, which only considers acuity, but does meet the state's definition, which considers other factors.

[Elilly]

Indiana has an awesome autism mandate law that paid for ABA, speech, OT, and even music therapy. I don't know about public services as we were able to get private services covered through insurance with the mandate. HTH.

[o_mom]

Indiana has an awesome autism mandate law that paid for ABA, speech, OT, and even music therapy. I don't know about public services as we were able to get private services covered through insurance with the mandate. HTH.

Do you know how the mandate law applies? Does it apply to 'self-insured' plans?

I know those plans are typically excluded from state regulation and fall back to federal laws and might be important for the OP to know.

[niccig]

My friend is in California and gets respite care for their child, I believe 20 or 40 hours a month.

I'm in CA, and my friend gets respite, but she doesn't know for how much longer because of the budget issues. And the person they sent ended up stealing from them. She's now found her own sitter, who had to do a certification program, and respite pays a certain amount, but it's less than going sitter rate ($10), so she has to make up the difference if she wants a decent sitter. I'm sure not all the sitter's provided steal, but as it's not highly paid she doesn't think it attracts best candidates and she's not willing to risk it again...

CA is supposed to be pretty good, but with all the budget issus, I don't know how much longer that will be.

[Elilly]

Here is a link to autism mandate laws for each state:
http://www.ncsl.org/?tabid=18246

[o_mom]

Here is a link to autism mandate laws for each state:
http://www.ncsl.org/?tabid=18246

When I click through the Indiana link, it says that self-insured plans are exempt. :(

[Elilly]

My employer still paid for it even though they weren't legally obligated to do so.

[o_mom]

My employer still paid for it even though they weren't legally obligated to do so.

What a great employer!

[lurksalot]

We are in CA and my son (3.5) receives 40 hrs a week of ABA and has since he was 2 years old. When he turned 3 the school district started paying for 15 hours a week and the county pays for the other 25. He is pretty severely autistic and has a tentative MR diagnosis, so this allows the county to keep covering him. We also have 72 hours of respite per quarter.

My friend just moved here from Indiana and her 9 year old son (autistic and LD) is still on the wait list for state services (or would be if he were still in IN). She explained to me that IN does not have competitive funding for SN services. On the other hand, when they moved to CA, the county and the schools are really challenging her son's autism diagnosis. Apparently in IN getting a diagnosis is easy, but not services and in CA it seems to be the opposite.

Tiffany