Well, some headway is finally being made on her case but once again they are up to sneaky tactics.

I just want her to get her hip surgery so I am done fighting at this point. I will fight to change the program after this is done.

So, besides all of the things going on with Elizabeth, we finally had a diagnosis on two of my sons and they were both diagnosed on different levels of the autism spectrum.

I guess you could say we are a mess.

So we persevered through all of these issues and finally decided that we needed to move yet again and buy a house. Angelica needed a lot of space. She has so much equipment and needs room for therapy and needed easier entrance in and out of the house. Our rental had a lot of steps and I had to heft her up them daily.

Angelica was in school and she loved it. She rode the bus everyday with her siblings and was in the same school as them. I loved her class. She had an teachers aide who pretty much just took care of her. They went on field trips and she was treated like a typically developing child even though she, as well as her classmates were not. On her last day there they threw her a going away party complete with cake, ice cream, and gifts.

I guess that school gave me some high expectations so when I visited her new school I was not only disappointed, I was upset.

It did not seem like a school. It was not at a school. It was a seperate facility that the county contracted through to provide services for children (and some adults) like Angelica.

In reality, it was a nursing home for children. They called it a day facility. I called it hiding the broken. I also did not feel they recieved adequate care.

But, I allowed myself to be convinced to give it a try.

WHAT A MISTAKE!

When was I going to learn to listen to my first instincts?

They were great......for about a month. I think this is when they thought I was going to let my guard down, when in truth this is when I really started to pay attention.

I began to get uneasy. There have always been little things but one of my biggest concerns was about food. She was here because the schools contracted for her to be here but they had no lunch program which meant that I had to provide all of food which was more difficult because they didn't want anything that had to be heated and I had to pay for it even though she was eligible for free lunch.

I began to suspect that she wasn't being given her lunch.

Also, I didn't feel comfortable with the amount of attention she recieved. The ratio was five students to two teachers, however whenever I stopped in (I liked to come in unannounced to check on her since she was always so unhappy) there was never more than one staff member in the room. Also, all of the other children were autistic and demanded much more attention than my sweet non-verbal Angelica.

Well, I need to get back to real life for a bit. There was a bunch going on at the same time at this point so I will post more on her school issue then give more info on what was going on with the compensation program.