REACH reaches out to help families in need

At Home with the Kids
By Michael Wittig

My son turned three last week. To help him celebrate, I baked and decorated some car-shaped cupcakes and took them to his TLC group at REACH, where he shared them with eight other toddlers.

TLC stands for Two’s Learning Class, part of the Infant Learning Program, one of many services available at REACH. And, as the name of the class implies, the birthday boy was making his final official appearance with the group.

I have been a regular visitor at REACH since our daughter was born. At first I attended a weekly infant playgroup that borrowed the REACH playroom. When our daughter was about fifteen months old I started taking her to TLC, and after our son was born I brought him along.

In addition to attending TLC, we started receiving regular home visits from speech and occupational therapists that continued until our daughter was three. When our son also exhibited a language delay, he began the same program as his sister.

It could be argued that a one hour visit once a week can’t make much difference in the life of a child, but in addition to the help our children received directly, there was also the insight and training these visits provided to me and my wife. Quite often we were able to apply what we learned during the visits, and the responses from both of our children were invariably positive.

In an era when governments are looking to trim expenses anywhere they can, we were a little surprised to discover a government-funded program so well suited to the needs of our children. We were even more surprised to learn that we qualified for the program.

The reason we were able to get our children into these programs is because household income is not the criteria used to determine eligibility. The services of the Infant Learning Program were as accessible to my children as they are to any child under the age of three.

These services have meant a great deal to our family. The evaluations of our children’s development allowed us to gauge their progress, placing their abilities in context with typical child development. They also showed us where our children were challenged.

To say that my children have benefited through REACH would be an understatement, especially in the case of my daughter. A lot of research on autism has shown that early intervention is one of the best therapies, yet under current guidelines TEFRA Medicaid requires that the medical evaluation for autism be performed after the child’s third birthday. For this reason, most doctors do not evaluate children for autism before the age of three.

The support we received from REACH bridged the gap between our recognition of a problem and the official autism diagnosis, after which TEFRA stepped in to cover the treatment expenses that many insurance plans (including ours) do not cover. Without the services of REACH, the assistance our daughter needed and received would have come much later.

Like most people in Juneau we live a modest lifestyle, pay our bills, and manage to set aside a little money for a few of life’s luxuries. If necessary, we could have paid for the services we received for our children, although in doing so we would have severely compromised our modest lifestyle, to say nothing of the luxuries we would have to do without.

Because of REACH we didn’t have to choose a life of Spartan deprivation to afford services. We’ve kept our home, kept up with the bills, and we’re still able to put a little aside.

When my daughter turned three she left TLC and REACH. By then, she was enrolled in the integrated preschool with the Juneau School District. She’s doing very well there.

My son won’t be joining his sister in preschool this year. While it is true that he had a significant language delay a year ago – the reason he qualified for services through REACH – that delay diminished with time. Before his third birthday, he had literally talked his way out of preschool.

My birthday boy enjoyed his last day with TLC. The other parents, all mothers, marveled at my intricately decorated cupcakes. The kids just liked eating them.