Child Care

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My son is 5 and not in school just yet, he will be starting in August...Right now he goes to a private homebased day care with a woman who has been keeping kids for over 30 years. She's kept J for 3 years and has been GREAT. J has behavioral issues - especially aggression, and of course, meltdowns. She has made it very clear that a child care center wouldn't have kept him as long as she has based on these issues. She loves him to bits but does admit he is the most difficult child she has kept...

Anyway, she won't be able to keep him once he is in school...My question is - what do you all do for child care? I guess it probably complicates matters that we wouldn't need before and after school care - just holidays, snow days, and summer break.

We don't have the money for a sitter (and there aren't many people we would trust with him either!!). We don't have family in the area that is available during the day...

ANY ideas??! !

Thanks!

Are you in the US? I know our local park district has "camps" for special needs kids, including camps for the times you're talking about. I'd start there - check and make sure they have something that suits his needs. A friend of ours, in a larger city than we live in, actually got a full-time aide for her aspie son, because they didn't have a camp that matched his needs, but were required to offer equal access.

I am in the US but a fairly small town (not tiny, but not tons of resources either). Anyway this has been one of my most challenging issues!

Since DS was a baby, I couldn't care for him like I did his older brother. I didn't know it was autism, just that he had different needs. He needs 1:1 or 1:2 care. So far we have always paid for it with someone in the home. That said during summer, I would really like him to be able to go to camps and such - but I'm sure he couldn't handle those offered in town and I cant manage or afford those camps that are about an hour away, specifically for NVLD and Aspie kids.

I wish I had a good answer for you - I am still figuring this out, at a time when most of my friends aren't worrying about it at all - DS is 11, and this is still a challenge.

Yes we are in the US. We are in a small town in a rural area. I don't know of any special needs camps around here other than one for ASD, but it is only a few days, and last year was 4 saturdays.

I do not know too much about it, but I think some states have programs that offer respite care. There are people who are trained in dealing with autism and will watch your child to give you a break. I have never used it, but I have seen mention of it. Check into what programs are available through your state/county.

The wait list for respite care here is 7 years. Maybe you'll have better luck in your state.

This has been a long term problem for us as well. I have never found a great solution. I think if he is currently in care with that woman, I would be BEGGING her to do it on the times I needed. I hired an in home nanny last summer and it wasn't ideal. We've tried camps (disaster!) and day cares. I don't know what the solution is...I end up just working from home or not working and struggling to make ends meet during those times.

The only way to get Respite in Virginia (that I know of) is with Medicaid Waiver. J might qualify for the DD waiver, but you can't apply until 5 years, 9 months and there is a huge waiting list...

The childcare provider we have is only licensed to 5 years 11 months of age, so that won't really help...

Looks like Autism Speaks has a state-by-state searchable database of caregivers (sounds like you already researched this, but I'm posting it anyway for the other readers of this thread) http://www.autismspeaks.org/community/fsdb/search.php

I still think that if your municipality or state offers some kind of child care/camp for NT kids, you can ask for the same care with an aide for your child; I think this comes under equal access. Worth asking about, anyway.

Well...In some ways I am lucky as I know some of the resources out there as I am a Social Worker at an ICF-MR facility...If I didn't work where I do, I wouldn't have the first clue about Waivers and such, lol!

Maybe you can ask the lady that watched him if she knows of anyone. Maybe you could arrange vacation time around some of it. I know that probably doesn't help too much.....

we resigned ourselves to poverty =) we have a two parent household and one of us is always working full time, while the other has worked none or part time (night or during school hours) or rarely full time graveyard, depending on the ages of the children at the time. we did make a conscious choice to make sure one of us was always home with the kids, especially after our third was born and it was obvious from the beginning that he was "different" than most. we have twice had help from a relative for 3-6 months when our part time work was coinciding with the full time work. our oldest was in part time day care for 2 years when very young, but the other two have never been in a daycare situation.

not real helpful probably. a lot of households cant do what we've done, and i feel lucky we have been able to.

do check with the school he will be attending, some schools offer before and/or after the bell services, basically child care for working parents. that wont help with vacation, sick or snow days, but it helps with the daily mismatch of school vs work hours. and check local hospitals, where i lived previously they had a sick child drop off service where parents could have a sick child cared for so the parent could still work. for vacation times, sometimes local places like gymnastic schools will offer camps for the kids, i worked at a childs gym center in college and was in charge of doing the vacation camps; just be careful with those as they arent staffed by professionals with any knowledge of autism.

My husband switched careers. He's a realator now and can work mostly evenings and weekends and while she's in school half days and then take care of her when she's home. Not making much money due to the economy, but things will get better.

I switched jobs too. I can work from home on 'family emergency' days, and for our family we end up having an emergency at least once a week.

We also moved provinces so we could be closer to my family. My parents still work, but they're pretty good about helping out if we ever get into a jam.

My daughters 3 and just diagnosed 10 months ago. It's been a year of huge decisions and changes and major financial challenges, but I'm glad we did everything we did cause we have a much more stable and realistic situation going forward. There is no way she could have gone to daycare or a dayhome, it just wouldn't work for us.

Good luck!

5 was a rough year. We put our son in a private school that offered full-day classes and had after-school care available. The kindergarten had 2 teachers and we later found out that one of them spent the majority of her time working directly with my son. For regular school holidays either my husband or I would take time off of work, or we'd ask a relative to keep him for the day. For summer they offered a summer school and we kept him there.

For first grade we did essentially the same thing with swapping time off of work for school holidays and we put him in a special needs summer school during the summer.

By second grade he was in a year-round school and we put him in the local recreation center off-track camps. He got a lot of written warnings about his behavior and he'd usually be at the point of being on probation by the time the two-weeks were up.

He's in fourth grade now and his behavior (compliance) is so much better. We still use a recreation center (we've used 3 different city rec centers now) for summer or holidays but we've changed which one we use based on the hours they're open, proximity to work, and how strict they are with behavior.

You might try looking into rec centers if you have them. The recreation centers here don't advertise their camps.

i gave up my career to stay home and look after the kids because i couldn't find anyone who would do it for me. yes, it is unfair and yes we are struggling financially because of it but there was no other choice.

Your care provider can't universally say that all care centers would have refused to keep your child; some are very accommodating of special needs. Many are not, or claim to be and then do a horrible job, but some actually do know how to handle AS. The on-campus childcare center at our elementary school was absolutely wonderful with my son and also enrolled some much more deeply affected special needs kids.

The answer to your question is that we did use the on-site childcare center, and also enrolled our son in many summer day camps and vacation camps. The funny thing with him was that if he loved a topic and location enough, it didn't matter if it was all strange and new. I always filled out a few instructions on the forms about avoiding unexpected change, watch the sensory issues, watch the transitions, but overall it wasn't usually necessary. He knew that to get this great experience - which he would have picked from all the catalogs - he had to hold it together for 6 hours. And, so, he did. We did not do unstructured play camps; he always picked science type camps, camps held at the children's museum, or acting. Very structured. Of course, those camps cost more than the play ones, often double or triple, but having a successful experience is worth it.

I did cut back a lot on my work hours over the years because of the childcare question. Even with a great center, my son made it clear he needed quite a lot of mom and, so, we rearranged things to give that to him.

Try contacting your closest Regional Center. My kids got the most help from the Regional Center (we lived in California). We had in home therapy for my Daughter (autism) and respite for both my kids (son has Aspergers). They may have to re evaluate your son but they are typically very quick compared to other organizations.
I also had to quit my job as my daughter was not getting enough stimulation in the child care situation that we had. It was very difficult on us for me to give up my job but we managed to make things work....we ate lots of pasta and beans LOL!
Also you might want to run an add to try to find someone who has experience with Autism or special needs. You may want to contact the boys and girls club in your area.