Nolan’s Journey for Understandable Speech

We’ve been navigating the TX red tape to get Nolan back into speech therapy. He was evaluated in May, before we left Alaska, and had a 49% understandability (up from below 19%). We had been advised not to begin phonics with him last year because of speech. Our insurance, Tri-Care, was paying for two 45 min sessions a week because the school district said he needed the services but they didn’t have the resources to provide the service.

I had hoped that Tri-care would simply take our info from AK and transfer it to TX – but this was not to be. I had to contact the local school district and begin from scratch again. We ran into a road block when the school district would not return my calls. Persistence paid off when I was finally given the phone number to the DESK of the District’s Superintendent of Special Education. I began calling her desk daily. She kept apologizing for not returning my calls. I faxed reports to her. I waited and prayed and continued to call. Finally, after six weeks, a meeting was set up with the District Superintendent, the speech therapist from the school down the street, and myself. They offered me services contingent on enrolling him in public school. I declined the offer. They then told me that there is a “general pot” that they are required to have. Into this pot goes a percentage of the federal funding they receive for Special Education. These monies are to pay for services for “non-traditional” students. That would certainly be us. As long as they still have money in this pot, they will pay for private therapy at the West Texas Rehab Center. She explained that if they run out of money I will have to fight with Tri-care to cover the services. I was fully prepared to fight with Tri-care as we did in AK, so this is a bonus.

West Texas Rehab called and wanted to see Nolan for an evaluation. We did that on Monday (12th of Dec). I’m a bit skeptical of their plan but I’m giving it a shot. I have already told them that if Nolan needs more than the SCHOOL authorized (two 30 min appointments with one being a group session instead of two 45 minute private sessions) I will pursue getting Tri-care to pay. At that point we would have more freedom in what care is given to Nolan. BUT Tri-care won’t pay for treatment if the schools will…what a racket. They used the same test Tracy had in May. It showed that Nolan has made some progress in the past few months. I explained that we began phonics when it became apparent in July that he wasn’t going to be in speech any time soon. I think that focusing on each sound has helped him to isolate the sounds. She agreed. She also agreed with me that he needs to be tested by an audiologist. I’ve been asking for THIS for over two years and kept getting sent to the school district where they do a “screening” and say “no hearing problems”. She agreed with me that that he needs more than a screening. I suspect she was more willing to listen than others because this center has their own audiologists.

W TX Rehab will be calling to set up appointment times with us “soon”. This is a huge change from “All for Kids” in AK. This place is NOT a friendly private practice…it’s big…more like a small hospital. It is also high tech. They have one way windows we can watch through and phones we can listen in on. I miss the “personality” of All for Kids, but we are determined to make this work for Nolan.

It was gratifying to hear that Nolan has not lost ground. We are grateful for the improvements….some days things still sound like “Charlie Brown” speech around here…but we are believing that a day will come when he is understood the majority of the time. Prayerfully by the end of this assignment. OK – a pardon to all my Southern friends…but I’m a bit concerned as to how understandable he will be after three years of private sessions with a native West Texan. The older boys have informed me that *my* accent is getting terribly bad and I corrected Arielle this week reading “asked” as “axed”…something we hear a lot down here….