Navigating Union Rules at Schools

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Our unions are very powerful here in British Columbia. I have problems getting necessary therapy because of this. When a child turns 6 years old, our funding goes down from 22k a year to 6k a year. It is assumed that your child is in school full-time and will receive the necessary speech, OT, etc from them. When in reality our school district has only 1 speech and 1 OT available for the whole school district. Kids are seen on a priority basis. I am thankful that I am able to get about 20 min of speech a week through the school district now. I am not eligible to get the OT because they are reserved for kids that have much higher OT needs than my son.

Now my problems is that you can not have a non-union employee doing any work with the kids at the school. So, I have to have the therapy at home. Big drag! My son LOVES school and I can't imagine having to take him out and then bring him back. Makes no sense to me. And he would not do well with that either.

I need to find a way to get the school to allow us to have someone in. Especially if we've been told they have nobody available to give him the services, what am i supposed to do?

Any advice on how to deal with these things?

We are in a slightly similar position. The OT who has treated our son while he is in pre-school is in private practice and while he isn't excluded from practicing at the school due to any hard and fast rules, he chooses not to because he just doesn't want to step on anyone's toes. My plan for the fall when DS starts Kindergarten is to have the OT sessions at home either at the beginning of the day or the end of the day so there would be no pulling him out of school mid-day then taking him back. Don't know if that would be an option for you or not.

You know, that is an option and we will end up doing it. But, I am just bitter that I have to. I wish I could have someone go into the school and take care of it there. My son is not the only one that has OT needs and because of staffing, they are not able to get the therapy. We have the funding to help pay and some people do not. The school system taking care of it is not a reality. However, I should be thankful that there is lots of early intervention. Just wish there was more in the budget for afterwards.