First Steps Program

When we first took Gracie in for her appointment with her pediatirican I asked her about Grace being evaluated by First Steps, which is an early intervention for developmentally delayed children under 3 years old, program that's run by our state. Every state has a program like this, and ours is called First Steps. The pediatrician told me that she had to fill out some paperwork for First Steps, and that they shoud be calling me to see about setting up an appointment to have Gracie evaluated. The evaluation is free, and I wanted to find out the level of developmental delay, if any, Gracie might have due to being in an orphanage for the first 10 months of her life.  That was about 5 1/2 months ago.

So I waited, and nothing. I don't know what happened. If the paperwork was lost, if the pediatrician's office never sent it in, or what went wrong. I didn't really think about it much after that, but then when we had Grace's 6 month post-adoption follow-up visit with our social worker, she asked if we'd had Grace evaluated in the First Steps program. I told her the story about the pediatrician's visit, and she said First Steps had offices in each county in our state, and I could just look up their phone number in the phone book and call them directly.

The next day I looked up the number on whitepages.com and called. The number I called was not for our county office, but for our state, which was fine. The not-overly friendly woman I talked with asked a couple of questions, and told me that I'd be getting a call from someone in our county to get us signed up. The next day I got a call from Alecia. Alecia explained that she needed to have a few things from us before the evaluation could happen: a copy of last year's 1040 tax form, a copy of Grace's health insurance card (front and back), and her social security number. Okay, no problem, I made an appointment to have Alecia come out to the house to give her the information she asked for and to get us signed up.

That very afternoon, I another call from Jenny to make an appointment to have Gracie evaluated on her speech development and her gross motor skill development. Boy this agency works fast! Alecia was out at our house yesterday to explain even further what is going to happen in regards to having her evaluated and if she qualifies for having any early intervention developmental therapy what would happen. Alecia was kind and friendly. I have to tell you, that so far I'm impressed with this government agency! Everyone, with the exception of the first woman that I talked with (the state lady), has been warm and friendly. They also have gotten back to me in a timely manner, and have been accomodating to our schedule as much as possible.

Who'd have thought that with so many goverment agencies where you can get caught up in red-tape with people that don't really seem to care, that there is such a gem of an agency! I'll report back to let you know if I still feel this way after Gracie has her evaluation, but for now IMHO this agency rocks!