EI advice

I had lo evaluated at 10 months for autism. Im very familiar with the field as as a mother and a professional i know we are on spectrum. I wanted services to start asap as they help the sooner the better. Well we didnt qualify but i know it was because they dismissed us due to age. They spent like 10 min there and barely heard my reasons. That being said i want another eval for services but dont want to be ignored again. Im going to request a dif agency but do you think i should wait for 15 months or go for it now over a year? If i call now and they say no then we have to wait a few months for another eveal but if the new agency hears me and really looks then we will get servces now so waiting is a disservice. What would u do ?
And i say 15 months since that seems to be the earlis for diagnosis ive seen on this board
Im also not a crazy mom. There is zero chance we are not on spectrum.

Re: EI advice

What are your LOs areas of delay? He or She is 15 months old? What skills does he or she have? What isn't he/she able to do that other babies aren't doing at 15 months? What development areas concern you, OT, PT, ST, Education/Social/Play Skills?

ETA:at 16 months they can do the MCHAT, you can even print it up and do it your self...

https://www.m-chat.org/print.php

Message edited 7/26/2014 2:26:53 PM.

Re: EI advice

Go with your gut. There is no magic number of months you have to wait for a re evaluation. I called the state to ask. At 12 months my DS's delays were dismissed for the opposite reason, I was told he smiles makes eye contact etc... All other delays- gross motor, fine motor-speech he wasn't delayed enough. At 15 months we got pt and speech.
As long as there is a new age bracket criteria for them to do the evaluation in, they can do another. Ie: our pt eval it was based on 2 month brackets, where special ed teacher eval was based on 6 months. So the same test being administered and criteria for scoring at 13 months-18 months.

EI advice

Go with your gut.
Keep in mind though that many evaluators work with several agencies. So using a different agency may not get you different people. My son was evaluated by EI for asd by a psych. 6 months later he was evaluated again by psych for transition to CPSE. It was the same psych. I used different agencies for EI and CPSE eval. It's not so much a different agency but make sure you have a different set of evaluators.

Message edited 7/28/2014 7:26:46 AM.