- Brady's Teacher
- 2 Classroom aids
- School Occupational Therapist
- School Speech Therapist
- Home Speech Therapist
- District Speech Therapist (specializing in devices)
- Southwest Human Development Speech Therapist (the state's contractor for device evaluations)
- Southwest Human Development Occupational Therapist
Do you think we have enough support? They brought several different devices to demo and they wanted to observe Brady using the different models to determine which was most appropriate for his needs and abilities. Brady was fairly cooperative and wow'd them with his love of buttons. At one point, one of the reps was covering a few buttons at the top of the device and Brady was trying to shove her hands out of the way. He wanted sole control! The great thing is that we know he will want to use one. The challenging thing will be getting him to use the device for communication and not as a toy.
It's not yet official but Brady will likely be approved for the Prentke Romich Vantage Lite.
This is a huge, huge deal! It is known as one of the most cutting edge and complex devices on the market. Brady will be able to use the same device all the way through high school as it facilitates reading and writing. For now we can program it to be more simple. The reason approval for this device is so huge is that, in most states or school districts, it's extremely difficult to get approval for something so complex and expensive. We also have to have support at the school level because somebody has to train everyone at school how to use it. Luckily our district supports this particular device and Brady's home speech therapist has experience with it as well. Did I mention Brady's new device will cost more than my car is worth? We are very fortunate that we don't have to fund this ourselves as many other parents do in order to get the best device for their child.It's going to be a lot of work learning the software and how to program and back up everything on a regular basis. Even more work will be encouraging Brady to use the device in an appropriate manner. I'm going to find ways to cut back at work because I want to put everything we've got into this. I want to give this boy every opportunity to finally have a voice.