Question About Attaining Services

[AnalogWife]

DS is 3.5 with an Autism dx and has received all his services through Child Development Services, a county program for kids 0-5.  They've been very good to us, right now he gets preschool 5 mornings a week, Speech Therapy 3 hours/week, PT for 2hrs/week, and OT for 1hr/week, all at no OOP cost to us.

I'm looking at a couple websites for the Easter Seals and one for an Autism Family Services program, they both maintain Special Needs preschools (I passed on both of them, very happy where he is) but they also have other Therapeutic Recreation programs (mostly swimming).

It almost seems too good to be true, to have all these services available to us, I feel a little funny going outside CDS, like I'd be "cheating" on them if we attained services elsewhere.  Does that seem ridiculous?  I feel greedy or something, like if they wanted me to take advantages of these outside services, they would've told me about them.

Is it common to take advantage of services from multiple sources?  Have you?  TIA

[PikkuMyy]

I'm not sure what state you are in, but I used to work in early intervention in CA, and almost every parent took advantage of all of the available resources - why not?

For example, one student had preschool provided through Easter Seals, in-home ABA therapy through the school district IFSP, and speech therapy through EI, and then the family got respite hours from the Regional center.

ETA: Don't feel in any way guilty about getting your child any service or advantage that's out their for him. That's your job as his parent, and that's why the services exist. The state/school district benefits from any extra services you get him because the more/earlier services a child gets, the less they'll need as they get older.
Edited by PikkuMyy - 12/12/10 at 10:24am

[~cassie]

We have little to nothing available here but what we do have(outside sources) is readily offered up by therapists.  My son's EI therapist is the one that got us into private therapy in addition to her with the local university.  The state can only provide so much(esp where I live) so a good therapist will see that your child gets needs met even if they are obtained elsewhere.