My daughter is 20 months and last week qualified for speech services. According to our insurance company she gets 20 visits per calandar year. What happens after we have used the 20. Should I look into EI. At 20 months she only has 2 maybe 3 words. The therapist and myself are not worried about any other cognitive or developmental delays other than speech.
Re: Speech
I would ask for an evaluation from EI. In our state EI is free and if DS qualifies for it we might as well use it (obviously it's not *free* we pay for it in taxes). EI is in place to help children who have some sort of delay catch back up.
Also make sure to check your insurance, most insurances have a lifetime max on how many therapy visits they will allow.
I would use your insurance speech visits while waiting for EI to kick in.
ETA: I just saw that you're in Cinci. You can either call your pedi for a referal or self refer. The agency is called Help Me Grow, they are the EI provider for Ohio.
We've been in HMG since DS was about 1 month old.
HMG is for 0-3 at 3 years old they get transferred to the school system.
https://www.ohiohelpmegrow.org/
Your LO will need a 25% delay to qualify for HMG. which it sounds like she will.
If you are near the University of Cincinnati, you can also check out their speech and language clinic on campus and see if they have any openings, what ages they will accept and all the details - cost, etc. Most college clinics do not take insurance, but the fee for therapy per semester is typically minimal. Therapy is provided by supervised graduate students.
Andrew receives speech through EI. There is a max monthly payment (income based) so if your insurance won't cover you should be OK.
He has been in EI for speech (and others) for almost a year. He went from 2 words at 18 months and now he is talking in completely sentences. He had no progress for 5 months (but he has other delays, too), then just took off.
We love the EI program and our therapist is amazing! I love that they come to the house, too.
I'm another vote for EI. My son (2 last month) started speech therapy 1x week and DI 2x week only 4 weeks ago and he's shown remarkable improvement for a short time. Plus my copay is low (in NJ it's a sliding scale based on income)--lower than my insurance copay.
My current health insurance has no cap (visits per year) for EI therapy through them (private) but the copay is higher and visits would be at the provider. EI comes to my home--so it's a no brainer.
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