Ministry of Children and Family Development

Margaret from the Ministry came by my home today to discuss what is available to Marshallas far as services go, and the funding that is available to pay for the therapies. Dan and I had already had some input from Dr. Brown as far as where to use the funding, but Margaret was helpful is letting us know how the invoicing works and what not. She was really nice and seemed sincere. She just loved our home... stating that the outside (the front) does not speak well for what the inside looks like, which is true :) She also, as most people do, fell in love with our backyard. It is a simple town lot which is a little larger than standards now for building, but it is square, fenced, and flat. We have done quite a lot of landscaping and have a large play area,a trampoline, and last fall Dan built a large shed that stores a lot of our stuff, but also has a sofa and tv so the kids can watch movies and what not in there. We have a decent sized patio for the kids to ride their trikes on as well. It really is a great space for kids, the reason we bought our tiny house, and it works out that with M's special needs, this environment at our own home is a big benefit!

Our home is small, just 1200 sq.ft, so having the shed as 'inside space' is great! Margaret agreed with me that Marshall being in the First Step Program through FVCDC would best suite our family at this time. She let me know that i'd be getting a large package of paperwork in the mail that i needed to fill out to get the funding set up for M. From now until Marshall is 6 years old, the funding for therapies is set at $22,000 per year and then once he's 6 it goes down to $6000 per year. The First Step Program will take the entire amount of funding for the year. The other option that parent's have is to hire their own therapists (speech, behavioural, occupational) and then have seperate visits with their child either in your home (you'd need a 'therapy room') or at another location. You'd have to pay into that therapists EI and vacay pay (etc.), and then also, you'd pay for all of the therapists to meet together frequently and hope that they can come to a consensus on Marshall's needs and then write regular reports on him. Due to the busyness that is our lives at this time, to hire seperate therapists with different agendas just seems like too much to figure out. So I will be meeting with Janel from First Step later on this week to hear more about their program and hope that it is a good fit for our son.