For those of you that are low-income with special needs children

[Mamasota26]

I'm just curious how you do it? My son is still a baby ( almost 5 months old) and I am trying not to anticipate the struggle that lies ahead for us. We are a fairly low income family. I just wonder how we are going to make it if my son needs tons of therapy, needs to go to a special school, etc. I'd love to hear from other people in that situation or hear any advice. I am using Help Me Grow and Early Intervention in my state right now but not sure what I would do if my son needs a lot of special care....

[BetsyNY]

Have you applied for SSI for your son? Does he receive Medicaid?

[Linda on the move]

Originally Posted by Mamasota26

I just wonder how we are going to make it if my son needs tons of therapy, needs to go to a special school, etc....

the state will pay for a lot of this, even special school.

[Mamasota26]

I haven't yet applied for SSI for my son because we don't yet know the extent of his problems. Can I apply with a diagnosis of epilepsy and white matter brain damage? That is about all we know right now.

[Mamasota26]

Yes my son does have medicaid. Early Intervention, PT, and Help Me Grow are paid through that.

[askew]

Originally Posted by Mamasota26

I haven't yet applied for SSI for my son because we don't yet know the extent of his problems. Can I apply with a diagnosis of epilepsy and white matter brain damage? That is about all we know right now.

Yes. My DD has white matter damage and they told us to apply, but we did not qualify. At the time DD had no delays at all, the diagnosis alone qualifies you so long as you make under a certain amount of money.

[2boyzmama]

You said Help Me Grow, which is what it's called in Ohio, so I'm assuming you're from Ohio. Have you looked into BCMH? My son is on BCMH and they cover all of his therapies and specialists. http://www.odh.ohio.gov/odhPrograms/cmh/cwmh/bcmh1.aspx Basically BCMH covers anything on his list of diagnoses that insurance does not, including copays and deductibles.

If it weren't for BCMH, we would be in a world of hurt. We have to re-qualify every year, and I'm always a nervous wreck!!!

[KatWrangler]

We are currently low income. We get SSI for Gabrielle as well as MO Medicaid. Our MO Medicaid insurance provider has been really really good to us. They have even covered her special socks and shoes.

Also, because we are low income and she has an IEP she qualifies for free pre-school. At the pre-school she gets PT and OT.

There are alot of services out there. Its finding out about them and navigating the services maze.

Are you going to a children's hospital? Well even if you aren't contact a Social Worker and start gathering what services you can get and when you would qualifiy.

Oh, one other thing. Because of Gabrielle's condition we qualified for a Complex Case Manager (who is an RN) with our insurance company. They are a tremendous resource as well.

Good luck! Just give a shout out here for help. I am sure one or more of use can help you.

[~cassie~]

Aidan gets SSI and Medicaid and that covers a lot. But then we also have a need for more speech therapy that Medicaid won't cover-they only cover a certain amt, and for that we went to our local college that runs a program for grad students doing the speech therapy program(whatever the name of the degree is called) and we pay 75$ every 3 mths and he is seen there a few hours a week.

My sister has her son seeing grad students inthe Psych dept for Behavioral therapy, also for a fraction of the cost. So defintely a good place to look if you are needing additional therapies that won't be covered under Medicaid.

[bandgeek]

We get medicaid and waiver for DD and also SSI and WIC. We also use help me grow and BCMH. I know there's even more we haven't looked into. We just haven't needed it.

Pretty much everything is paid for.

[SashaBreeze]

Medicaid will cover most if not all of the things you will need. It even covers our sons medication which was a 2 thousand dollar co-pay at his company before he lost his job and we started receiving medicaid. It seems with higher costing meds and such they seem to drag their feet and you really have to have a medical team willing to push hard to get the papers signed and pushed through. But once you get everything rolling it works really well. All of our sons medication, therapy, dr's (even specialist) and his AFO's were/are covered through Medicaid. It was actually a nice transition for us to no longer have to pay all those co-pays through the insurance company.
As far as special school goes if you happen to live in a small rural area like mine that does not have a school for your child. We have been having great success at having our son's therapist work with us coming up with an appropriate homeschool curriculum for him. If you end up having to do something like this you will have to pay for it out of pocket but we just use our income tax refund check to pay for that.
Hope we have set your mind somewhat at ease.

[47chromosomes]

We are in your same boat financially, and as others have said, the state pays for much of what your son will need. And do pursue SSI sooner than later for your son. I know sometimes it can take a while and is quite a process.

[Linda on the move]

Once you get connected, you find out more and more little things. The social skills my DD takes, for example, is out of pocket, BUT they do have 1 scholarship. There is a program in our state to pay for a person to help with life skills for teens with special needs, and the parents get to pick the person so it can be a friend. There are a lot of little things that you'll find out about as you go along.

[justmama]

Just my daughter's breathing medication is $550 monthly. That is if she doesn't get sick and require her rescue inhaler or her predisone or any albuterol. That's just the maintenance meds she takes daily. I'm a single sahm on food stamps and medicaid and wic to 3 little girls. I could NEVER afford that without our medicaid. We don't qualify for anything else but fortunatley we don't need it yet. We are waiting for official diagnosis for my oldest but her psychologist is $200 an hour. Jst in the last month we've spent 6 hours in his office. Again, could NOT afford that without medicaid. We are really lucky that we have the medicaid because being low income I just could not get my daughters the help they need on my own.