What a lot of lovely people
With an autistic kid in the family, here are just some of the professionals that we now deal with on a regular basis.
Specialist Health Visitor Nice lady, but has never actually given us any information or advice that we couldn’t have got from a book or the Internet. In fact, when she came to talk about toilet training, she brought a print-out from the NAS website with her!
Local Health Visitor Also very nice and very keen to get involved. Has a brilliant tendency to phone just after the specialist HV has been to see us, so I have to bite back the urge to say “Not today thanks, we’ve just seen your mate!” However, she has managed to cotton onto the fact that we are more interested in free nappies than toilet training at the moment and is finding out what’s available for us.
Speech Therapist The best of the lot (in fact my husband fancies her a bit!). She is supporting both us and the nursery in teaching T to use PECs (Picture Exchange Commuication system - users learn to swap picture cards for food with the aim of helping them to develop their communication skills)
Head of Nursery attached to mainstream school that T attends. really supportive and full of ideas. probably due for beatification
Teaching Assistant T’s individual helper at nursery. The person who actually looks after T while he is at nursery. So a good relationship both with t and us as parents is crucial.
Child Development Centre Teacher Was involved in T’s original assessment and reviews his progress at Nursery once every half term.
Child Development Centre Nursery specialist Was also involved in the initial assessment and came to our house once a week before he started nursery. We were never quite sure why, but it was nice to see her. She used to blow bubbles a lot and sing him songs, which he likes.
Educational Psychologist A very important person. Not seen very often, but her opinion carries most weight in determining T’s educational provision. What she says in her reports tends to be what goes in the Statement
Head of Specialist pre-school programme Another VIP. She will decide in the near future whether T is to be offered a place on a full time programme run by our LEA for autistic children to prepare them for mainstream school.
Statementing Officer There’s a whole gang of these. They work for the LEA. You get assigned a junior one in the first instance, who has the job of ensuring that the administration of your statement is properly done. As you start to ask stroppier questions, you find yourself talking to people with more authority.
Community Paediatrician Part of the assessment team. Not seen very often
That’s about it at the moment. But he’s only just 3. And it’s quite possible in the future that our lives will also be enriched by acquaintance with occupational therapists, continence advisors, social workers (particularly if we ever want respite care) plus goodness knows who else.
What we find really difficult is that there is no one person amongst all these whose job it is to have a grip on everything that is going on. So we have to run very hard to ensure that the whole thing doesn’t fragment.
{btw - Has anyone spotted the obvious ommission? The one professional who has never had any involvement either at initial diagnosis or assessment and has never seen T since except for a couple of ear infections - Yes, you’ve got it. Its the GP}