Respite Update

I can't remember what I have said or not about the respite care Caden receives. So here's an overview:

Through Alta California Regional Center, he receives respite care. This is non-nursing care for Caden (and they will watch Kyler also) and allows me (and Greg) to get out of the house and have a break. It has been an on-going process with them.

- In August/September last year, Caden received 90 hours of childcare for those 2 months.

- In October, all respite hours were taken away due to budget cuts and Caden not having a diagnosis of one of the following:
-mental retardation
-autism
-epilepsy
-cerebral palsy (CP)

- In November, Caden's neurologist diagnosed him with “Mild CP” which qualified him for respite again.

- By the time all the paperwork went through, it was the end of December before we got the 90 hours to use and all hours are given on a quarterly basis.

- For the months of January – March, Caden had 90 hours of respite to use during that time period and life was good.

- For the months of April – June, Caden was again given 90 hours of respite to use and things started off okay.

- Then in April, I was contacted by Caden's service coordinator at Alta who said that because Caden was now receiving LVN nursing care, he no longer would receive respite and those hours would all go away as of May 3.

- I fought back and told her that I wanted legal documentation of the trailer bill language because I would be fighting this. Nursing care and respite care are 2 completely different things!

- After asking for more clarification from the trailer bill language, the service coordinator agreed to leave our hours in place until the end of June.

- I told her when/if they were going to reduce or take away his hours, they needed to send me a notice of action (NOA) because I would be pursuing legal action.

- At the end of May I received the NOA indicating that Caden's hours were being reduced from 90 hours/quarter down to 24 hours/quarter beginning July 1 so I started the legal process to fight it.

- On July 9, I had an “Informal Meeting” with the people at Alta to discuss the situation and see if we could come to an agreement. We couldn't.

- The following week, on July 15, we met again, this time with an impartial mediator to help in the negotiations. I worked with a local agency that provides pro-bono legal help for families with children with disabilities and the attorney was able to provide me with useful strategies for this process.

- I went into mediation asking for 60 hours/quarter and outlined my reasons why.

- They came back and said they could offer 48 hours/quarter but could not do any more than that.

- Greg & I had decided ahead of time that we would try to get 60 hours but at a minimum we would accept 48 hours.

- Since they agreed to give us 48 hours/quarter, I settled the matter during mediation. We were able to cancel the fair hearing which was scheduled for August 5. The good thing about settling during mediation is that I had a say in the outcome. If you go to the fair hearing, the judge is the one who decides who gets what and it might not have been in my favor. He/she could have decided we shouldn't get any hours and that would have been bad.

So, I settled at mediation for double what they originally offered but half of what I started with. Overall I think I did okay. Now that's one less battle I have to fight.