occupational therapist ?

Can a child go to an occupational therapist WITHOUT going through the school system.. I have been (weakly) trying for 2 years for his school's OT to evaluate him.

Re: occupational therapist ?

Yes. Get a prescription from the doctor and you can go to an OT for an evaluation. If you need a recommendation, let me know. I work w/ a few.

Message edited 1/28/2009 10:59:41 AM.

Re: occupational therapist ?

Re: occupational therapist ?

You can like the PP said, through your insurance. BUT, have you submitted your request in writing to the school? State law requires school districts to proceed and conduct a special education evaluation within 30 days after a parent refers the child for testing.

Re: occupational therapist ?

Re: occupational therapist ?

Re: occupational therapist ?

Re: occupational therapist ?

Posted by bayla

Posted by KeithHernandez

Can a child go to an occupational therapist WITHOUT going through the school system.. I have been (weakly) trying for 2 years for his school's OT to evaluate him.

I am an OT and yes you can. You would have to do it privately and pay out of pocket or try to go through insurance. Look in your yellow pages for OT pediatric clinic/therapists or ask around.

Has the OT in your school even looked at him though? I know if a parent has a concern, the principal or child study team will give me the alert and i will make sure to get into the classroom to observe the child, talk to the teacher, etc to see if an evaluation is warranted. The problem with the school based OT is what you said, if he's not struggling in school then they prob wont qualify him unfortunately. Although, if he has a weak grasp or poor fine motor skills it may be affecting him after all in school and maybe the teachers are missing subtle clues (e.g presses to hard or to light on the pencil, difficult time spacing words, cant write on the line, leaves out letters when copying from the board, etc). If all that is fine and you are still seeing other issues that not affecting him academically, then the way to go would be privately
HTH

Re: occupational therapist ?

btw.. thank you to EVERYONE for their help..

Re: occupational therapist ?

Posted by KeithHernandez

Posted by bayla

Posted by KeithHernandez

Can a child go to an occupational therapist WITHOUT going through the school system.. I have been (weakly) trying for 2 years for his school's OT to evaluate him.

I am an OT and yes you can. You would have to do it privately and pay out of pocket or try to go through insurance. Look in your yellow pages for OT pediatric clinic/therapists or ask around.

Has the OT in your school even looked at him though? I know if a parent has a concern, the principal or child study team will give me the alert and i will make sure to get into the classroom to observe the child, talk to the teacher, etc to see if an evaluation is warranted. The problem with the school based OT is what you said, if he's not struggling in school then they prob wont qualify him unfortunately. Although, if he has a weak grasp or poor fine motor skills it may be affecting him after all in school and maybe the teachers are missing subtle clues (e.g presses to hard or to light on the pencil, difficult time spacing words, cant write on the line, leaves out letters when copying from the board, etc). If all that is fine and you are still seeing other issues that not affecting him academically, then the way to go would be privately
HTH

I have talked with the principal. I'm very active in his school and am on a bunch of committees with her so she KNOWS me... I will admit, I didn't try HARD enough... but after the 3rd time of TRYING to contact the OT to follow up with her, I called the principal directly.

had a small *meeting* with her & the school psych one afternoon when I happened to be at his school...

Since it was the en of the school year, I didn't expect anyone to get back to me.

Here we are into the second half of the school year and I hear second hand that there is a NEW OT.

I will admit, I didn't follow up at the beginning of the year so I know it is partly my fault. I'm just dreading attempting to get anywhere with the school and was wondering whether or not I should just do it privately.

Do YOU take insurance??

Message edited 1/29/2009 12:16:30 AM.

Re: occupational therapist ?

honestly, if you want the school to evaluate you need to contact the sp. ed. dept. the building principal has nothing to do with sp. ed. (i'm speech). sp. ed. employees of the district work for the sp. ed. director technically, not directly for the principal (though we work for them too). write up a request and submit it to sp. ed. all they can do is evaluate and have the CSE and tell you that your DC doesn't qualify. you can still go through insurance and have your child evaluated/get services. if your child doesn't qualify still, you can search out a private therapist and pay out of pocket as you would for a tutor, though therapists can be somewhat expensive as we are highly specialized services.

Re: occupational therapist ?

Re: occupational therapist ?

I didn't read every response thoroughly so this may have been said already but.....send a written request to your district's office for special education. They have 30 days to comply by setting up an eval and meeting. I would def take this approach if you're not getting the results you want through the building principal and psychologist. You are your child's biggest advocate, if you feel something is wrong, don't let anyone make you feel bad for pushing the issue.

Re: occupational therapist ?

Posted by bayla

Posted by sasha96

honestly, if you want the school to evaluate you need to contact the sp. ed. dept. the building principal has nothing to do with sp. ed. (i'm speech). sp. ed. employees of the district work for the sp. ed. director technically, not directly for the principal (though we work for them too). write up a request and submit it to sp. ed. all they can do is evaluate and have the CSE and tell you that your DC doesn't qualify. you can still go through insurance and have your child evaluated/get services. if your child doesn't qualify still, you can search out a private therapist and pay out of pocket as you would for a tutor, though therapists can be somewhat expensive as we are highly specialized services.

while i agree that contacting the spec ed department will prob yield quicker results (esp in this case), their are some schools where you can contact the Principal and they will guide you effectively. In one of schools my principal is very involved and if a parent has a concern, she immediately contacts me (or speech or PT) as well as contacts the child study team. I think it depends on the school your in

Re: occupational therapist ?

Posted by sasha96

Posted by bayla

Posted by sasha96

honestly, if you want the school to evaluate you need to contact the sp. ed. dept. the building principal has nothing to do with sp. ed. (i'm speech). sp. ed. employees of the district work for the sp. ed. director technically, not directly for the principal (though we work for them too). write up a request and submit it to sp. ed. all they can do is evaluate and have the CSE and tell you that your DC doesn't qualify. you can still go through insurance and have your child evaluated/get services. if your child doesn't qualify still, you can search out a private therapist and pay out of pocket as you would for a tutor, though therapists can be somewhat expensive as we are highly specialized services.

while i agree that contacting the spec ed department will prob yield quicker results (esp in this case), their are some schools where you can contact the Principal and they will guide you effectively. In one of schools my principal is very involved and if a parent has a concern, she immediately contacts me (or speech or PT) as well as contacts the child study team. I think it depends on the school your in

that is true, but in this case, after 2 years of contact about the concerns, not much has been done so I think a note to sp. ed. with the principal copied on it will get the results if they want the district to test.