So what has been keeping me busy?

The last two weeks (and to some extent the last 1 1/2 months) I have been really involved in helping parents of children birth to three stand up for their children with developmental delays' rights. On January 31, 2009 Arizona Legislature amended the 2009 state budget which in this case meant making huge cuts to education and social programs. AzEIP was severely cut back. So these kids that among other things have autism, down syndrome, epilepsy, are deaf or blind, etc have had services that are federal mandated, (and are at least partially if not fully funded) by the federal government cut to them. I know of families that have kids on feeding tubes that are having feeding therapy cut off, blind kids and their families are soon not going to be able to learn braille, kids who are almost two and not able to sit up being cut off from physical therapy, etc.

Unfortunately because these kids do not have a paid lobbyist or an already established Association there is no one ready and able to fight for them. It is left to parents like me that have seen the benefits of Early Intervention on my children to try to find, educate and encourage these parents to stand up for what their children need. Most of these parents are barely treading water in their own lives and now they are suppose to be fighting the legislature against budget cuts. The children of these parents are not even treading water, hence the need for Early Intervention services.

For an example of how awesome some of these parents are fighting this, of the 2240 children that had their services cut off through DDD, the AzEIP office has received 100 disputes. Now I understand that is less than 1 %, but in the last several years, there has been like 3 disputes. So to go from 3 per two years to 100 in 3 weeks - that is a whole bunch of people standing up and getting involved. We talk about children being the future, we say to have compassion on those less abled, it is time for Arizona to stand up and start doing something about that.