For those who are fostering a kiddo under the age of three, I want to make you aware of a resource you might not know about: First Steps. As it states on their website, the mission of First Steps is “to partner with Hoosier families whose young children are experiencing developmental delays and connect them with services that help them promote their child’s development.”
First Steps is a program that I first learned about when my now 22-year-old was an infant. He was born with torticollis, and even though we tried to remedy it with some stretches on our own, it was not quite enough. We were referred to First Steps by the pediatrician (although FYI: if you have specific concerns you’d like an opinion on, you can contact First Steps yourself and do a direct referral).
Basically, it works like this: Once the referral goes through, you are contacted for an intake and then an evaluation; all of this is done in home, which is especially nice if you have other children; you don’t need to find a sitter or take them all along to these appointments. If the child qualifies for services, and assuming your foster child is on Medicaid, you will pay nothing and the therapy or therapies will happen in your home; for children not on Medicaid, I believe it is insurance-based but I do have not have personal experience with that.
For my older son, he qualified only for Physical Therapy (PT) once a week. So once services began, we had a PT come to our home once a week for an hour. She would spend time stretching him, but more than that, she would teach me what to do to continue the work on the other days, which is where the real progress in his condition took place. Obviously, the weekly appointments were crucial to ensure I was staying on track with my “tasks”, but the fact that I became knowledgeable and equipped helped me do what he needed; point being, we were able to work as a team to get him on track.
And as what I think is a kind of cool aside: Fast forward 11 years later when we took placement of a medically-fragile 3 month old (who had severe torticollis, as well as several other needs), we were already trained in how to do the stretches so we were able to begin them right away, as we awaited his First Steps referral to go through and for services to begin.
And speaking of services, I need to explain that First Steps provides so much more than PT (our youngest, in fact, used PT, OT, Speech and DT). So just for your reference, the services available through First Steps include:
- Assistive Technology (AT)
- Audiological Services
- Developmental Therapy (DT) (which includes Family Education, Training, and Counseling; Health services; Medical services; Nursing services; and Nutrition services)
- Occupational Therapy (OT)
- Physical Therapy (PT)
- Psychological Services
- Service Coordination (SC)
- Social Work Services
- Speech Therapy
- Transportation
- Vision
- Other Individualized Services
One last thing I would like to mention is that even if your child qualifies for a therapy or service with First Steps, it might be that they have not progressed enough by the age of three; in such a case, they will then have therapies outside the home. My youngest had PT, OT and speech in home, but still needed services once he turned three so we transitioned to outside therapists. And from my experience, First Steps does a wonderful job of helping you with the transition; they do not wait until the child is 3 and then simply drop them. They begin helping you with the transition process a couple months out so the child doesn’t have a lapse in services.
I know that this will not be a need that every foster parent has, but I wanted to make you aware just in case you or another foster parent you know might find it beneficial.
Sincerely,
Kris