WTF (again)

Disclaimer: I like Austria, I am just royally pissed at the system today. So skip reading if you do not want to hear me rant and ramble. I would fight equally for my son, regardless of what country we lived in, OK?

We got our decision regarding day care last week. Remember, I wrote about it here and here? Vince is not allowed to stay where he is now. But we DO have an other day care space (which is a victory in itself as hundreds of kids will not have a space in Graz in fall due to the ‘great’ political decision of making free for everyone – therefore thousands of kids more that usual have been applying, but that is a different story). Anyways, the place is a good place. A new kinder garten that will open in September. It is kind of small, only one group there, which totals 25 kids. With 2 adults.

Yep. 2 adults at all times. 25 kids. Where Vince is now there are 3-4 adults on 12 kids. I am REALLY terrified that Vince, who is actually not that social (bummer, beats that DS myth about how social all people with DS are), will not like it as it gets too loud and will go and hide out in a corner while playing on his own.He is really good at that, playing on his own.

So I did a lot of research on what his possibilities are. Research is not that easy. You see, you have to call a lot of bureacracies, and a lot of times I get dissed immediately due to my accent. If I don’t add a ‘I am sorry, I am from Sweden, and I do not know how it works in Austria‘ thing right away, I get sent to the bottom of the pile immediately. It is annoying as I am capable of doing things for myself, but over the telephone I am just another foreigner. B and I have split what we are trying to do for Vince, and I want to be part of this. He does all the written stuff and the actual applications (which are about a million of too to feed the bureacracy). We also split taking turns going to the different therapies Vince participates in. And somewhere in between we both get about 50 hours a week at work…

I did find that Kinder garten Assistent, it is called 1:1 Assistant and it does exist in some areas in Austria. However, not in Graz. I just found that out. There is something called IZB, which we have applied for, and today is the decision day. IZB is basically a team of therapists etc that comes to the kinder garten and spend x hours with the kid with special needs. But go figure, no new IZBs have been added this year, eventhough there are A LOT more applicants, so there are just a few free spaces. Rumour has it that we can call in tomorrow or Wednesday to see if we got one assigned to Vince. We just faxed in our application last week, which is VERY late, but what the heck, we had no decision before that.

IZB would help some, that would mean that a ST, EI, OT would be with him 3-4 days a week for a few hours. But I do not know if that is enough? I do not think he needs someone 1:1 100% of the time, but he is definitely not at the same level as the majoprity of his 3 year old peers.

I just called DS Austria, and the lady there is always really helpful. I am waiting to hear back from her. I have also heard of something called a ‘Shadow person’, and maybe she can tell me more about this. From what I understand, this is someone who at least kids with autism can get, and I do not know whay they woul separate based on diagnose, to help in kinder garten/school. However, with this type of ‘support’ Vince looses some of his other benefits.Tit for tat I guess…

Ok, feel a tiny bit better now. Let’s see what it all brings…