ECI

We had our first meeting with ECI this afternoon. Our case manager, Mike, came out to the house to just do an initial "get to know you"-type of evaluation. He and I spent most of the time talking about Claire's history and the process we'll follow if she qualifies for services. He'll come back out on Nov 18 with a speech-language pathologist who will do a more thorough assessment and together they'll determine what sorts of interventions and/or therapies Claire may need. Mike is an autism specialist, and he was sent to us because of Claire's speech regression. He said that he's never seen a regression as profound as Claire's is that wasn't autism. BUT, after doing an autism evaluation today with her, he's positive that's not the problem here. (OK everyone, sigh of relief) When I asked him what he thought could be going on, he said his first thought was that there could be a problem with the speech part of her brain. (And how we'd determine that or even fix it is beyond me, and, of course, I wasn't thinking about any of those follow-up questions at the time.) At the end of our meeting he told me that based on what he had seen today, he's fairly confident that she will qualify for services, but we'll have to wait for the next assessment to determine what exactly that will look like.