So what else have you done this week? Oh, I am glad you asked. I have been crazy busy! Mostly doing the thing everyone likes least; dealing with Social Services. I absolutely hate this process! It is quite demeaning and absolutely time consuming.
The quest for assistance continues. Last month, March 2012, I and my children were dropped from the Arizona Medicaid Program twice! It was upsetting, frustrating. Plagued by trying to do the right thing, we were dropped for failure to provide proof of income. Why? Oh it went to the wrong address and was delayed! So we didn't recieve notifcation that additional information was needed until after Medicaid had dropped us. Many phone calls, okay just 2, but it was well over 2.5hours on the phone with an actual person! I can't tell you how long I spent on hold.... So thinking everything is fixed and good to go. I went about my family business and searched for a job.
Then I learned it was again dropped and that they said since I had quit working voluntarily I and my children were to remain ineligible for 1 year! Absolute craziness!!!!!!!! Yes, I admit I stopped going to work, but only because I could not afford to FEED my three children and pay for CHILD CARE for one child. I was forced to make a choice, between maintaining my families status on the food Stamp program so we could eat, or leaving my 2 year old unattended, so I could go to work! This was the choice I was faced with because Arizona cut all funding to the Child Care Subsidy program in 2008 to balance the budget and I was not making an adequate commission from Aflac. (Not all my fault, but not all Aflac's fault either.) Eventually a few supervisors understood what I was trying to explain, and helped me fix the situation, or so I am told. Currently, we do not have food stamps to buy food, which could be because I misunderstood when we would receive them, or because we were dropped again.
Onward! More Social Services fun! A while back my five year old was on an IEP in the Developmental Preschool, then I was told he was ineligible for his kindergarten year, but if I received a diagnosis he would be reconsidered for an evaluation at school. Alas, I presented the school with a copy of the Psychiatrist notes and requested he be re-evaluated the second week of school. Nearly the end of the school year he has not been re-evaluated! His teacher has begun to express concern about his ability to grip a pencil and scissors properly, aka -motor skills are falling behind! Unable to move the mountain that is the IEP process at Peoria Unified I have begun pursing the other avenues of assistance. The Arizona Department of Developmental Disabilities and Social Security Disability Income. At this point I hope that one of these government agencies will be able to assist me so that he does not fall further behind. Perhaps one can provide us with ideas on how to improve his motor skills, reading skills and social understanding of the world around him or even provide us with financing to give him Occupational Therapy or Physical Therapy for his motor skills development. Aggregated, yes. This process is very time consuming! If I had a job I am not certain I would be able to peruse any assistance for my son.
The shear amount of paperwork working with all the agencies has created in the last 45 days is appalling. My poor 3 inch binder has become overwhelmed. Between my desire to better manage my own ADHD issues and to prevent my son from suffering needlessly when he can learn to work better with his abilities, the folder is exploding. The problem is all the agencies want a copy of what the other agency has done, what the other physician has stated, ect. So, I keep copies! Soon I will have to separate my own paperwork from the families, and possibly his from the families, just so I don't end up with back problems from carrying all the papers with me.
I will likely separate mine from the families later today. Simply working with the Social Worker at Fresh Start Women's Center, my counselor at Terros, my Vocational Rehabilitation Intake Worker, and my own physicians/psychiatrist is a Martha Steward organizational wet dream. Thank God, that I am pretty anal retentive, and good at organizing endless streams of paper!
Exasperated.
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