I have recently completed my certification in Early Childhood Special Education. This semester I was enrolled in three classes given by the United Federation of Teachers at Brooklyn College. During our classroom discussions, my colleagues constantly came upon the topic of the difficult cases of children with special needs that they had encountered as substitute teachers or as paraprofessionals in the school system. Being the only infant/toddler development person in a room of 30 elementary, junior high and high school teachers (including my professor), all I could think about were the recent budget cuts that were made to the New York State Early Intervention Program and how it will impact the population of school age students with disabilities in the public school system. The Early Intervention Program was created under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to serve children under the age of three who have a disability or developmental delay that is physical, cognitive, communicative, social-emotional or adaptive. Developmental delays prior to age three can and usually will lead to some learning and behavior problems when the child reaches school age. Early Intervention catches these delays just as its name implies…early, and provides therapy for the children so that their risk of having issues when they reach school are much smaller than if they had not had any type of interventions or therapies. So why has Governor Cuomo allowed a 10% budget cut for the New York State EI Program? Your guess is as good as mine. It seems to me that it is like skimming money off of the top just to end up using it elsewhere to deal with a problem that the skimming off of the top created to begin with. The more children that enter school with unaddressed developmental delays and inadequate readiness for school, the more money that will be spent on special educators, school psychologists, social workers, speech language pathologists, occupational therapists and child psychologists on school aged children in the public school system. Why not prevent children from having issues when they get to school instead of working twice as hard to help them overcome the inevitable difficulties that they will now face for possibly their entire academic careers? The growing number of autistic infants and toddlers that need the correct stimulation and interactions from EI therapies to help them to make their way in life as early as possible are now receiving less services. There is no doubt that this will greatly decrease their developmental progress and make it even more difficult for them to function in society. The cuts took place earlier this year and I have already seen the profound effect that it has had on the availability of services to the infants and toddlers in the Early Head Start Program where I have been the Education and Disabilities Coordinator for the last five years. Prior to the cuts, I saw children enter our program as infants and receive multiple EI services. By the time the children turned three years old and left our program, they no longer needed any additional therapeutic services and were able to continue their education without receiving any Special Education services in their new childcare and school settings. The cuts have resulted in the decreased frequency of services for children who desperately need them as well as a lower rate of service approval even after the evaluations deemed the children as delayed and eligible for the services. It is a frustrating process to watch the children go without what they need when the resources are right at our fingertips. So now the question becomes-how do we fight further budget cuts and begin to restore the much needed services to children? There are a variety of ways to reach those who make the decisions. The United New York Early Intervention Providers and Parents as Partners (UNYEIP) is an organization of over 1500 members that work with or are in some way connected to the EI services in NY. Their Action Alert page is full of links that contact members of the assembly, the governor and organizers of movements and protests against the cuts. There are ways for all of us to stay informed and to get involved in advocating for our children. There are also resourceful articles and fliers located on this site that will further inform the public of what is taking place and assist advocacy efforts. I’m definitely going back to my program equipped with the specific information that is impacting the children and families that we are working with on a daily basis. So often we go about our days as teachers and service providers forgetting that we can make as much of a difference in the lives of our children on the state level as we can during our one on one interactions with them. Take that small step and make the difference.
