Respite Care in Cincinnati, Ohio

My personal experience as been with the Redwood Rehabilitation Center on Orphanage Road off Dixie Highway in Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky. It is a stellar organization and should be used as a model for the excellent care facilities.

the Arc of Hamilton County has several programs to help with cover costs for respite services:

Family Resource Services Program can help families pay for respite services. A sliding fee scale is used to determine the percentage a family will pay for services. The program provides funds for families who are eligible to receive MRDD services.

Parents' Night Out can provide funds to hire a sitter for a child with a disability.

The Children's Home of Cincinnati offers a Child Care Program for day care and kindergarten readiness for children ages 3 months through 5 years of age. Children with special needs are accepted, but they must be able to function in their day care and preschool program settings.

Evening Star is a program of Fellowship Baptist Church in Mainville, Ohio, that provides respite services once a month for families that have a child with a disability and their siblings. Families do not have to be church members to participate.


Max's Home a day care center for medically fragile children, is a division of Maxim Healthcare Services. It provides medical treatment, adaptive education and respite for families who have children with special health care needs. Infants and children ages 6 weeks through teenagers are eligible for treatment.

MR/dd
has respite services available for eligible families. Contact your Service Facilitator to begin the process.

Nat. Child Care Information Centerdeveloped by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides information and resources on child care and early childhoold education.

Ohio Department of Job and Family Services provides a daycare facility locator.

St. Joseph Home of Cincinnati
offers a respite program with 24-hour personal and medical services for medically fragile and developmentally disabled infants and young adults.

Wright's Law and IEP

Wright's Law Web site has a great ARTICLE about writing IEPs or "individualized education plan."

From our own experience, it involves first identifying the child's strengths & abilities. What is this child capable of doing? This might involve having your child accessed by a team of early childhood experts before meeting with the school's psychologist.

To connect with the early childhood experts you need to contact an intervention team through a specialized organization or advocacy group. (DSA, NCPA, CAB, etc.) Most children's hospitals locally will have a list of local organizations and agencies that provide early intervention and education for new parents. It is CRITICAL that parents begin this journey early before the child is 3 years old.

Initially, our daugher's psychological accessment put her at a very, very young age so we wrote her IEP based on measurable goals and objectives according to her abilities based on where she is "developmentally." Her education plan isn't focused on academics. Not yet, anyway. Her education plan is focused on what SHE can do, not what her peers are doing.

We would have her in a classroom with her peers if that would be appropriate for her but it's not. She isn't anywhere near their "cognition" so she attends a therapeutic-based school where the focus isn't driven by academic standards or achievement.

That's our choice and fortunately we still have this alternative thanks to "continuum of alternative placement."

Advocacy 101 with Patricia Bauer

I can't remember if I have Patricia Bauer's web-blog indexed. She keeps a great collection of newsworthy articles on her webblog for easy references and her site is especially helpful if you are a new parent to a child who has disability labels.

From her website:

Patricia E. Bauer is a journalist who has served as senior editor of the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine; special assistant to the publisher of the Washington Post; reporter and bureau chief at the Washington Post, and pundit on public affairs television in Los Angeles. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times and many other publications.

Bauer is a former member of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) at UCLA, where she participated in the ethical review of federally funded medical research on human subjects, and has addressed national and regional conferences on the rights of patients and people with disabilities. During the Carter years, she worked in the White House press office as editor of the White House News Summary.

She is a member of the President’s Leadership Council at Dartmouth College, the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the board of trustees of the Riverview School in East Sandwich, Massachusetts.

Bauer and her husband are among the founders of the Pathway Program at UCLA, a post-secondary program for young adults with intellectual disabilities. They are the parents of two young adults, one of whom has Down syndrome and is a survivor of leukemia