Government funded home based therapy - a blessing and a massive challenge

Every homeschooling mother has her challenges. The more your kids' abilities increase and diversify, the more you take on to keep them challenged and learning.

One of my challenges as a homeschooler or just a human being, has been delegation of tasks. Inability to delegate usually results due to a lack of trust in people available for delegation. Perhaps you are aware of their expertise and abilities, but do not trust them with your task, even though you know that you are unable to do it yourself. This is harder when it comes to major responsibilities like children.

I am more than happy to delegate cooking, cleaning and laundry. Although I cannot afford to delegate those at the moment.

Part of running a home program requires trust in your child's therapists. Most of the work they do, I don't. So rarely does anyone cross in to the realm of activities I do with K. However since we got funding for our home therapy program we have had to meet the government's requirement for what they have standardized as home-based therapy for autism.

Although we are fortunate that we have a team of flexible, open minded people, these requirements still sometimes become an obstacle to streamlining homeschooling, life and therapy.

To meet the hours per week requirement for instance, I have had to hire more people. Ideally I would have liked to increase the hours of the existing therapists and schedule it around K's needs, but this has not been possible.

Therapists work independently for various clients and ours have busy, full schedules. They cannot just make room for you where you would like. Inevitably if you want someone for a particular time, you have to find a new person to fit the team. They have to be the right fit for your program, time and requirement. (An impossible combination in itself).

For some reason, I cannot seem to pull this off. For this reason I have to do sessions on weekend mornings because someone can only be available on a weekend. This gets in the way of my life with my family because I do not want anyone coming in on a weekend. I have to do a session at 3-5 pm one day and then 6 - 7:30 pm on another day.

Either I am unlucky and incompetent or the entire framework for funding home programs is flawed. Wouldn't it be great if we could save the money we waste on these garbage hours on weekend mornings and evenings, just keep our regular morning weekday hours going and then make the funding last LONGER for more YEARS and really use it the way it suits the disabled person and their family?

Why must I compromise by either sending him to school, a pointless childcare or after-school program or have him cooped in the house for more hours just to meet government requirements?

I want him to have a normal homeschooled life and be able to go to arts or sports in his afternoon hours. Finding such a program that will accommodate him and also be effective has been impossible to do. Every place is either overcrowded or teaching the same old anti-autism structure of circle time, story or group craft. Group instruction, over-stimulating environments, ignorant staff are the many walls that we hit whenever we try community things. Its fortunate that K actually enjoys a few things in his life, like swimming.

So last night when I had to leave my baby at home, to drive my son to a local pool to meet his new therapist there for the only public swim time available in the afternoon in our area at 6 pm, I wondered why does it have to be this way?

K is awake 5:45 am every morning (and so do I). Around 6 pm I would rather be giving him dinner and winding down with some books or quiet time with something else, in my warm and comfortable living room. Delegating swimming, an activity K and I enjoy together, has been difficult for me. Is he going to enjoy himself? Will he continue to learn? Will the new regular people in this new community pool be accepting of his strangeness? Am I doing him an injustice by taking his tired little body swimming at this hour? His emotional, social and physical well being consumes me to the point of ulcers.

I couldn't even bring myself to sit and watch them swimming from the viewing area. I spent the hour in my car trying to fight thoughts of baby falling off the bed, or spilling hot liquids on herself becoming scarred for life, or being run over at the traffic signal, due to the negligence of her caregiver (as my paranoid imagination would like to believe is the case).

I am really tired.

As he emerged from the changing areas looking content, I figured its not the end of the world. At least there are places here he can go to with someone competent and responsible. At least my ulcers will not be as a result of something worse like no therapy, or no funding, for now anyway.

He fell asleep on the way home, still smelling of chlorine and I was met at the door with a happy, fed, excited baby (who stayed awake for a few more hours!).

It is what it is.

We have to make it work the best we can, with whatever options we have available. It is not ideal, but at least we have something going for the next year or so. Who knows what will come next in our therapy/autism/homeschooling saga. Allah makes easy what He wills and no one change that and whatever He makes difficult no one can make easy.