Good God it's a minefield out there. I have just contacted two ABA service providers, one isn't taking an more children and the other has us on a waiting list. And the cost! My goodness, these people are just taking advantage.
If we go down the ABA path, we need to provide and pay for the therapists who charge around $25 per hour. We need a minimum of 20 hours per week so yeah, we need to make $500pw magically appear. And that's not including the cost of speech therapists, psychologists, occupational therapy, paediatricians yadda yadda yadda.
My head is spinning. This is so hard to navigate.
ABIA does ABA courses, you could do one of them and do some from home. I did the course through them. Alternatively, you could also advertise through ABIA for a therapist. Once you receive a diagnosis you will also be eligible for funding, but honestly don't know how that works.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, it really is a minefield trying to wade through it all. None of it is easy. For ST, try and get a health plan through the gp, medicare pays for a certain number. There's the mental health care plan through the gp for a psychologist as well.
I'm happy to help with ABA therapy if it's ever needed.
Thanks Sharalyn. I haven't heard of ABIA? I must google them. If they do ABA courses they sound like exactly what we need. The place I called today said the $6000 funding would cover their 'fee' for seven months! This doesn't include any psych or speechie services, it's just their service for them to write the programme and that gets you a whopping 4 hours a month! After the seven months you have to start paying them more. And if you want them to train your therapists you have to pay them $2300 and that gets you a total of two days training.
ReplyDeleteIt's just ridiculous. As soon as the funding became available they found a way to snap it up leaving nothing for the child to actually use for any kind of early intervention. It's criminal.
We have a plan and we should be able to implement it. I will put the details in my next blog post.