Developmental assessment?

Can you write her back and ask that very question?Some times, the sending state has requirements that are not known in the receiving state. good luck!

I did ask the TX worker and as usual she was almost as useful as a pair of snow skis in south Florida In August. She is rather unhelpful and nearly impossible to contact. Our licensing worker is amazing but has no idea what this is as it isn't something our state does for todddlers.

A developmental assessment or a psychological evaluation is done regularly here. We have one for each child that is placed with us as it is a part of our agencies intake list. You can have this done through a Psychologist that works with children. Basically what they are looking for are possible signs of developmental delay that the average person may miss. This is for your benefit so that when you approach mediation you can request continued medical or financial support for any needed services. Most Psychologists that do these evaluations will let you know if the child has signs of ADHD, Autism, MR, etc. They will write up an official report and you send a copy to your worker and the childs worker. When you call to schedule the appointment make sure you are specific that you need a Developmental Assessment or Psychological Evaluation for the child. If it is an office that works with children they should have what is needed to perform the assessment. Ask specifically for an ASQ (Ages and Stages Questionnaire), CDI (child development inventories), IQ, Mental Health Screening and ECI (early childhood inventory).

Good Luck to you. Oh and if you are having issues with the worker go to her supervisor and get clear and specific information in writing as well as verbally so that there is no miscommunication.

I'd definitely try to go through ECI, it will probably be the easiest and quickest. Ask if that have an LPC or LCSW to completed the eval! I work for ECI and our LPC is great :)Good luck!

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately I have called multiple Psychologists practices in our area and all of them say they don't see kids under age 3 and referred me to the local children's hospital, whose psychiatry department also told me they do not see kids under age 3 and referred me to the Developmental Pediatrics Department, which is where we are now waiting and waiting and waiting (a month so far) to even make it to the top of the list to schedule an appointment, which will be probably 5-6 months out. This child has been here for 11 months but came into care at 4 days old and neither her cw or the private agency requested any developmental psychology evaluation in the 10 months before she came to us. We are requesting zero dollars for insurance or subsidy and that won't change regardless of what this assessment says. She has had an ECI eval in Texas and another early intervention evaluation here. She got services for less than 6 months and was released from them. She has had developmental screenings every three months through her pediatrician. I am a licensed special education teacher, my mom has her master's degree in early childhood education with an emphasis on mental health and additional training in infant and toddler development and mental health, my mother in law is a licensed clinical social worker. None of us have ANY concerns about her development, attachment, bonding, etc. Her caseworker insists this is a hard and fast legal requirement that cannot be waived, so we will keep waiting. I am just frustrated as it will change NOTHING for us. We have her biological siblings who have a LOT more issues and a LOT more risk factors than she does so we are fully prepared for any issues she might have. It's just frustrating that this is holding it up when if her cw had told me it was a requirement in December when we completed our subsidy packet then we would be done already!

This is an interesting thought. Her caseworker told me ECI evals wouldn't work, but perhaps if there is a psychologist who does it that would be different... I'll call our early intervention program (not called ECI here) and see what they offer tomorrow then check with her cw to see if that would work. Thanks for the suggestion!

I called our early intervention agency today. They do have psychological services but only for kids who are already getting other services. Since she was dismissed from PT back in April, she isn't eligible. They did give me a list of a few of their psychologists who also do private practice and said they might be able to help, so not a waste of time to contact them. I'm waiting to hear back from cw (I also cc'd her supervisor) about what credentials the person doing the assessment must have-ie is it ok if it's a school psychologist vs a clinical psychologist etc. Thanks again for everyone's input.

Developmental psychologists see kids under three all the time, especially at children's hospitals. I adopted my daughter from China when she was 18.5 months old, and took her to the developmental psychologist for an assessment when she had been home for a few months, but was still under age two.I found the assessment to be very helpful. As an example, the psychologist was shocked to discover that my daughter was ABOVE her age level in receptive language (UNDERSTANDING ENGLISH!) and only slightly below her age level in speech. As it has turned out over the years -- my daughter is now 20 years old -- my daughter has unusual verbal abilities, in both English and foreign languages (not Chinese, but Hebrew and French!) The assessment let me make the decision to place my daughter in a bilingual school -- something that might not have been advisable if language had been a struggle for her.Becca was also found to be reasonably on target in terms of fine motor skills. She still had a little catching up to do, but was making rapid progress. Many kids adopted from foreign orphanages that don't have enough toys or playtime teach themselves to fold paper, and that was a favorite activity of my daughter. While we were in our Chinese hotel and on airplanes, she often entertained herself by folding pages from the telephone book and room service menu, the airsickness bags and in-flight magazines, and so on. This probably helped her develop her fine motor skills. To this day, Becca enjoys origami (paper folding, again!), as well as activities like crocheting.Where Becca was the weakest was gross motor skills. She was quite far behind. As an example, she had only recently learned to crawl, when the daycare teacher learned of her deficit and started using a crawling tube with all of the toddlers. She had no ability to climb steps at all. The developmental psychologist felt that part of her delay was simply the result of her extremely small size -- she was small, even for an Asian child, in about the tenth percentile for height and below the fifth percentile for weight. Stairs, to her, must have seemed like mountains! The developmental psychologist liked what I'd been doing with her at home, because she came home with extremely weak leg muscles, and could not walk very far. We practiced walking outside; if she could walk from one house to the next (close together) on one day, then we'd walk the distance from one house to one two houses away. Becca had some feeding issues, and we were also having an assessment by a feeding disorders team. The developmentalist's assessment was very helpful to the staff, which was coming to the conclusion that Becca did not have anything like failure to thrive (which has emotional implications); she was surprisingly well bonded to me, and we were having a great time together. All in all, shop around for a developmentalist, and most children's hospitals will have one who can do an assessment on a newly adopted child, even if he/she is under age three. You may have to pay for it out of pocket, however, as insurance may not pay for this testing unless there is a very clear problem.

Update:My soon to be adopted daughter had the developmental assessment at a very well known children's hospital that has an international adoption clinic as part of their developmental pediatrics department here in our home state. It was really nothing even slightly surprising to me. She has no developmental delays, no signs of any developmental delays, above average in speech and communication, average in all other areas. None of this was news to me. I'm a special education teacher with emphasis on early childhood education and experience in working with early intervention, early head start, and head start as well as public schools. I still feel this was a complete waste of time and resources that I'm now being told I have to pay out of our monthly foster stipend (the evaluation cost more than an entire month's stipend) since our state's medicaid does not cover it like Texas apparently does. I can see why this would be useful if I had never met the child or only recently met the child or if I knew nothing about child development and the child had not already had an early intervention evaluation in which she did not qualify for any services. But the hoop has been jumped through and our bank account is several hundred dollars lighter so we can move forward with the adoption regardless. :D