Do any of you homeschool a child with special needs? I do not have a special needs kiddo, but my neighbor does. She was involved in a lot of therapy until she was 3. This was cut off since she aged out of the early intervention program. Now she is attending a public school preschool to get the services. I am just wondering if those services are available to homeschoolers, or if therapies have to be paid for privately once early intervention is done. I am sure this varies from state to state.
Yes, it changes from state to state and in some states it can even change school district to school district. She should check with her state homeschool organization and see what the laws are in her state and if she could still receive services.
My son has CHARGE Syndrome and is severly visually impaired. He just turned 4 in Feb. He was in early intervention and was getting 11 therapies a week. I don't know about other states, but I live in New York and once they are out of early intervention they move on to pre-school aged services which here is from ages 3-5. The parent gets to pick whether or not they want to send thier child to pre-school or not and we still get services at home. They will lead you to believe that you HAVE to send your child to school because they get big state funding for a child in a special education program. The school district must(in my state) provide the services as long as the child qualifies wherever the parent chooses. After the age of 5 I can homeschool my child and as long as he still qualifies the school district still has to provide services, but no longer in my home, I will have to drive him to the school and he will get his therapies there, but only therapies not curriculum. There are many rights for homeschooling a child with disabilities, but I have had to find all those on my own the school district wants them in thier program because of state funding and they feel I am doing a great injustice to him by educating him at home. I only know for New York State, but if you tell me what State you are in I could so a little research and let you know. Don't know if this helped or is just a jumbled mess, but if you have any other questions I would be happy to help if I can.
We have 2 daughters who are mildly autistic. We are homeschooling the older one now, and will be homeschooling the younger one starting next year. Our public school district does not offer any services for children not enrolled in their schools. They used to offer after school speech therapy for kids in private schools (which includes homeschool), but the state stopped funding it. The 5 year old, who has been in our public schools EXCELLENT special ed Pre-K program for 3 years, is much farther behind in her speech than our 8 year old was at her age, so we are looking for speech therapy options for her that we can afford. We did do Early Childhood Intervention when the girls were very young. There is a state program called CLASS for people over age 3, but there is a 7 year waiting list to get on it. Our insurance doesn't cover speech therapy, so we are doing one hour of rec therapy (also very good, and much cheaper!) a week and are looking into other options for speech. When we called to sign up for CLASS, the nice lady on the phone also suggested calling MHMRA (Mental Health Mental Retardation Authority) and signing up for their programs. Both of the girls' IQ are too high to qualify them for most of the MHMR programs, but they do have things for people with autism regardless of IQ, so we have a meeting with them at the end of June. We'll see what happens. All of that to say... It does vary from state to state, and from school district to school district. Be creative. Talk to other people in your area who have children with similar issues and see how they handle it. We are also going to call the University of Houston and see if the speech therapy department there has a program in which we could get therapy for our children at a reduced cost so their students can "practice." It's worth a shot.
My 9 yr old son is a special needs child. We live in Texas and he was receiving Speech, occupational and physical therapy until age three. From there they told us he would receive some services through our school district if we placed in public school. We didn't and chose to homeschool instead. There are quite a number of Homeschool publishers nowadays that have curriculum tailored for special needs. While I have not purchased from them and I have looked at what some of them offer. We pick and chose based on what we have read, reviewed and on what works best for us. I will add that since we moved about six years ago, the school district we live in does offer some extention classes that we can take but I have not seen any so far that appeal to my oldest son.
It really does depend on the state and even sometimes the individual school system. Our school district in VA uses all the $$ they get for private school/homeschoolers from the govt on speech therapy. Although my DD9 receives OT services through our private insurance provider, she doesn't qualify for services from the pub school. We did have to have a child study meeting with the local school district to get a letter from them (for our insurance) saying that she didn't qualify, etc. Annoying to have to jump through that hoop but worth it to get our insurance to cover it. The OT has really helped her motor/processing deficits. HSLDA has a special needs fund through the Homeschool Foundation if a child needs a grant for services that the family can't cover. There is an application and limit of course but they did send us the info if we couldn't get Tricare (our insurance) to pay for services or testing. Fortunately, the paid for both (so far at least). Our daughter's issues are considered a learning disability but a processing deficit (which is an academic problem but different from an LD because of her IQ....long story there but either way, the OT is helping and that is what's important).
Marylyn, I wasn't aware you had decided to homeschool Katie for sure. Last I heard, you were still discussing it. Well, as I said earlier, you (and Katie!) will do just fine!
It depends on your state. Preschoolers definitely should get services as homeschoolers. Technically, older kids are supposed to also, but many districts will try to get out of it. Mine have gotten services as homeschoolers. Many people think that the kids do not have the legal rights, but they do. I think it is better to go private when possible for the school aged children. At preschool level, lots of kids do services with no preschool so it is not as much of an issue. I should add a federal law was passed about it with No Child Left Behind about a year or so ago. We got a letter from the public schools about it, but someone posted about it at the time too.
In Ohio, districts are not required to give services to hs'ed kids. I looked into it for a gal that was on here a good while ago. The information came from a VERY reliable, pro-homeschooling source.
