So, because our insurance stopped paying for any treatment related to a diagnosis of Autism the day Dominic turned 7 (and even before then they were covering less than 1/4 of the cost), Dominic is going to be done at Alpine in early August. This means he'll be at D11 all day - which for them is from 8-2:30. The SPED bus picks him up at 7:35 every morning. In theory they'll be dropping him off somewhere in the neighborhood of 2:45, but we don't know that time yet for sure. The SPED bus will, in theory, drop him off anywhere we ask them to within the boundaries of his elementary school cache area. So we've been looking for a licensed after school day care type place thats not ridiculously expensive, doesn't make us twitch that he could be comfortable in because it would be good for him to have some unstructured peer interaction time.
We are batting zero. We looked at the one place I've found that didn't give me the heebie jeebies over the phone, a Kindercare, and both of us were under impressed with the quality vs price. EG - they want $90 a week for after school care (can be up to 3hrs 45min each day, but would more likely be closer to 1and a half for us because that's our only time with Dominic, we'd rather hang out with him instead.. so that's like $12/hr. Ridiculous). It was cluttered and dusty, and the routine described to us by the director for "school age" kids - for example, they have to sign in to each "station" they use - just aren't things that would work for Dominic. And while she said they could support him, we're just not confident AT ALL that this would be a decent fit for Dominic.
One of the fliers we picked up at the walk on Saturday was for this place. I need to call and find out what they charge for their after school program because its pretty close to us. I asked the people at the walk, and they said for respite it was $25/hr and for ABA therapy it was $50-$125/hr. And they pick kids up from their schools. BUT, both those programs are listed separately on their flier from After School program. So i'll do due diligence and call them. However, if we could pay $2K a month, we'd be keeping him at Alpine ($2300/mo).
So we're kind of back to square 1. We have no idea what Rod's work schedule will be in the fall, but the kicker is that we have to fill out the transportation form for next year before school gets out this year so we're only a month out. I'll be sitting down with my boss this week and feeling out his thoughts on me moving my hours from 7:30-3:30 ish to 6-2. Which would be really hard for me sleep wise, but I'd figure out a way to do it. If he's amenable, then we'll plan to have one of us home every afternoon. The only downside to that is it doesn't offer any additional peer interaction time for Dominic, so we're still open to daycare, or possibly even a babysitter arrangement with a neighbor if that were to come about. But we've got to get something agreed upon before school gets out.
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