Like most parents to be, Frannie Mitchell of Mundelein had dreams of healthy, perfect children. But her oldest son was premature and has hearing and speech problems, her middle daughter had a bad fall and suffered temporary disabilities, and her youngest was premature and has minor cerebral palsy and a host of respiratory problems.
”Early intervention helped me to accept what was going on. Everyone expects healthy children, and when that doesn`t happen, you start questioning yourself, looking for fault. Early intervention gave me the tools, the understanding, the confidence and the ability to know the best way to work with my children so they can reach their full potential,” Mitchell said.
By early intervention, Mitchell means therapeutic, medical and family services provided very early in life, before a child`s problems compound themselves through inattention. Mitchell is convinced that such services are crucial to the success and happiness of these children and their families, and she lobbied for passage of the Early Intervention Services System Act, signed into law in September by Gov. Jim Edgar.
The law`s aim is to find and help children with special needs as early in life as possible and to turn a disjointed assortment of public and private service providers into a system parents can use and understand easily.
In the future, parents should be able to make a single phone call to their local school district and be directed to appropriate services.
Previously, intervention services such as therapy, special instruction and family counseling were provided at no charge for eligible children ages 3 to 21. The new law extends services to start at birth.
The expected cost is $4,000 per year per eligible child for approximately $225 million a year.
But because of the state`s shrinking budget, the new law is mainly good intentions, and it`s important to know that the state stopped short of making early intervention an entitlement program, such as Social Security or public education.
Even without money, the State Board of Education, as the lead agency, can do much to find and screen children needing help and coordinate services of the many agencies involved. But the hope is that over the next five years, money will be found for more extensive services across the state.
Despite the price tag, many are convinced that such programs are a bargain, saving many times their costs down the road.
Legislators cite the Perry Pre-school Study, which showed that a group of children at risk for developmental delays who went to pre-school are now twice as likely to be employed or in school. They also needed 50 percent fewer special education services through high school, had a 40 percent lower arrest rate and a 42 percent lower teen pregnancy rate than a control group. Economic returns were estimated to be seven times the cost.
Convincing, too, were a Stanford University study showing that early intervention produced significant cognitive improvement in low-birth-weight babies, and Colorado and Tennessee studies showing that kids who got help early needed less help overall.
One problem is that the new law extends services that many parents didn`t know were available in the first place. First-time parents or those with little community contact are often unaware of programs and services. Therefore, the state has mounted a vigorous public information campaign. Information is distributed at hospitals, doctors offices and schools-any point of contact with parents.
Children with obvious disabilities such as cerebral palsy or Down`s syndrome qualify, but so do children at risk. This means a child with a teen mother, low birth weight, who was premature or who shows signs of slower than normal development.
”Unfortunately, service providers are real sporadic in the state,” said Robin Thompson, director of Direction Services of Illinois, which provides information on disability-related services. ”There are areas where there are only diagnostic services available, and there are parts of the state where there are no services at all. And a lot of programs are floundering because there are no funds.”
But the Lake County area complies with the state requirements in many ways, said Kristine Weisenberger, the program supervisor of the Lake Parent-Infant Center. With locations in Libertyville, Lake Villa, Waukegan and Barrington, it already serves children birth to 3 (except children from Lake Forest, Lake Bluff, Highland Park, Highwood and Deerfield, who are served by the North Suburban Special Education District).
”We`re one of the few programs funded by the school districts, and we are the only public program in Lake County. There aren`t a lot of private programs, and they can be expensive,” Weisenberger said. ”We`re free because we`re through the schools.
”We have a very high number of young moms. There are just myriad problems with young mothers that add up to put kids at a real high risk. The most significant correlation between the progress and outcome of a child is the mother`s educational level.”
The Libertyville center, which handles all the diagnostic work for the four centers, is in a low brick office center on Milwaukee Avenue. Its cheery, if maze-like, rooms house an audio testing room, play rooms outfitted with large, colorful equipment, therapy rooms, and observation rooms with one-way windows.
Jennifer Swanson of Lindenhurst and son Ryan have used the center for a little more than a year. ”They take good care of him here,” Swanson said.
”I first brought him in at 6 months. He wasn`t diagnosed yet, because they`re real reluctant to diagnose problems too early, but I was concerned about him.”
Ryan turned out to have cerebral palsy and hearing loss. At the center he gets speech, hearing and physical therapy.
”The Parent-Infant Center also sends a speech therapist to our home once a week,” Swanson said. ”We do feeding therapy and cognitive things. He`s so much calmer at home and doesn`t spend so much time getting used to the environment.”
A child with very mild or undiagnosed delays might simply be provided with monitoring from the center. ”A parent can call us anytime, or we might go out to their home and give suggestions,” Weisenberger said.
When a child reaches age 2 1/2, the center starts helping the child make the transition to public schools. The staff assesses the child`s development and needs and arranges what is called a staffing with professionals from the child`s school district. ”Many go into special education programs. Some go into the school district`s early childhood programs. Some go into Head Start or commmunity nursery schools. Not all of them need special services,”
Weisenberger said.
Early intervention professionals stress that by investing a little time, care and money early on, the many costs of lost human potential can be greatly reduced, so many professionals in the field are worried and upset about the effect of state budget cuts on these programs.
”I`m very distressed that Illinois took the position of making it (House Bill 954) relative to availability of funding,” said Robert Abbott, associate superintendent of Waukegan unit district. Abbott, who has been working with early intervention programs since 1971, said, ”Twenty years later they still haven`t dealt with the problem of funding. Evidence shows programs like these pay off down the road. I think it`s going to become a very complex problem to serve even school age children, let alone provide early intervention services.”
William Vickers, a retired director of special education in the Waukegan district who now volunteers his time with the Special Education Parent`s Advisory Board, put it more strongly: ”I think these budget cuts will destroy the help for handicapped kids.” Vickers, who keeps in touch with state legislators, lobbying on behalf of intervention programs, said, ”They`ve got to put the money behind the mandate of House Bill 954.”
