Since I wrote last it has been approximately 45 days. This was the turn-around-time estimate given to me by my DFCS caseworker. Sure enough, I received Alexander's letter of APPROVAL (yay!) yesterday via certified mail. My caseworker also called me with the good news. So now that I'm personally out of those particular woods (my to-do list actually just got bigger, not smaller, with this new development) I wanted to update my Katie Beckett (Deeming Waiver) Checklist. So I did that but now here is the rundown of the experiences that helped me remember what I didn't include before.
- I can't believe I forgot to include the Psychological Eval in my checklist AND in my packet! This would be the report you received/will receive when you got/get a diagnosis of Autism from your (insert specialist here: we used a Neurodevelopmental Pediatrician). I worked for months to get the diagnosis and waited with bated breath to receive the report and then when it came time to hand in Alexander's Katie Beckett packet, I left the thing out. But it obviously wasn't the end of the world. Even my caseworker forgot to include a request for it in his first round of "you left this out." So I got a call from him a few days later asking for it. I pointed out that he hadn't made any note about it being missing on my Verification Checklist and he apologized and said he'd be sending me a new Verification Checklist. (Which he did.)
- Realizing the above oversight also reminded me that I didn't really go over the fact that you can't just go to a regular pediatrician to get an Autism diagnosis. In my experience, there wasn't a single person (doctor, therapist, special ed teacher, etc.) who would even say the word Autism in my presence without me bringing it up first. And then they would either say they didn't think he had Autism (which I believe was their honest opinion) or explain that they didn't have the authority to make that call (in which case I wondered if that meant they thought he might have it). This is because of mal-practice lawsuits. The people around you are protecting their butts by not expressing opinions about what your child "has." You can't really hold this against them with the way lawsuits work today (I mean, even I felt compelled to write a disclaimer at the top of these checklist posts), but the knowledge you should take from this is as follows: Find yourself a Neurodevelopmental Pediatrician, Developmental Pediatrician, or Developmental Psychologist. These are the people who CAN make that call. (There may be other specialties that also have that "power" but I don't know what they are.)
- Somehow, I really don't know how (I was reeeeally OCD about this paperwork, so I totally don't get it), I missed a signature line on the Level of Care Statement before I sent it in. This meant that a couple weeks later I received a Technical Denial of Services. (ack!) A Technical Denial means just that, a technicality is holding up the proceedings and you won't be able to get approved until it's fixed. This letter came via certified mail with a photo-copy of my filled-out Level of Care Statement for me to sign and return. Really not a big deal but I actually almost missed picking the letter up at the post office before it was returned to the sender. See, you have to sign for certified mail and apparently I didn't hear the door both days they tried to deliver it, hence a trip to the post office. So, I guess there are two lessons here -
#1) Have a buddy (a fresh set of eyes) look over the paperwork before you send it in to make sure you dotted all the i's and stuff.
#2) When your waiting for your Deeming Waiver Determination, assume that all certified letters coming in the mail are probably going to be about that! I totally thought the certified letter was something for my husband and when he didn't seem to know what it was, I figured it wasn't very important and decided to not stress myself out about going to retrieve it from the post office - ! Man, I can be a ditz sometimes.
