SSD evaluation

Last Monday morning, Dominick had his evaluation for the Special School District program. There were about four different evaluators present, including one who had observed Dominick at Stay & Play the previous week. I was worried Dom would refuse to cooperate and answer their questions, but after warming up, he was great. After the evaluation was over, each evaluator discussed his or her findings with me. A full report will be coming later.

The news was good: Dominick has progressed so well he does not meet the criteria for the SSD program. We didn't think he'd be found eligible. That just shows how much has changed since August when we requested the evaluation. In speech, Dominick is right at his age range and even a bit higher in certain areas. The occupational therapist found only a few minor concerns with fine-motor skills and low muscle tone, but nothing that put Dominick below average.

We have decided to discontinue speech therapy, effective this week. Erin had contacted First Steps about two weeks ago to report that Dominick has met his goals as stated in his IFSP. We had a meeting with Erin, Carol from First Steps and Angela, the SSD representative, during Dom's regular speech session on November 16 and said that unless the evaluation turned up additional concerns, we were going to drop speech. It didn't, so we did. Speech therapy has been very beneficial, but it's nice not to need it anymore. We may consider cutting back on OT, too, but I want to see what Jacqui recommends.