After being involved in special education for the past thirty (30) years, both as an educator and administrator, I recently became an advocate for children through my own consulting firm, Morgan Associates for Children with Special Needs. I learned early on in my practice that while services for children exist, unless you know your way around the “system” these services might not be readily available or accessible. Those who suffer are the children who do not receive the appropriate services and, consequently, their family and friends who love and care for them.
A prime example is a 15 year old male, A.M., who was diagnosed at age 3 with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and Asperger’s Syndrome. By age 6, A.M. was manifesting oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder and multiple head and body tics in response to anxiety. In his adolescence, A.M. became sexually aggressive and engaged in criminal behavior, such as counterfeiting money and vandalizing one of his teacher’s cars.
After A.M. was expelled from 4 private schools as a result of physically and verbally abusing both students and staff, his only option was home instruction. Knowing that A.M. could not safely be left home alone, his father arranged for placement at a Utah School for Troubled Teens. Almost immediately after arriving there, I was contacted because the Utah School could not adequately care for A.M.’s plethora of problems. In addition, his father could never afford to keep A.M. at the school for any lengthy period of time.
Within one week of being contacted, I set into motion a sequence of events that resulted in A.M. returning to New Jersey. As he stepped off of the plane, he was immediately taken to meet with a child-adolescent psychiatrist who determined that A.M. needed placement in a psychiatric hospital. A.M., accompanied by the psychiatrist, myself, and his father, went directly to the hospital, which was waiting to admit him.
Now that he was settled into a safe and secure environment, I then concentrated on what would happen to A.M. once he left the psychiatric facility, which would probably not be for months. Both his educational and residential expenses needed to be paid and for that I turned to the school district where A.M. lived and the State Agency for Child Protection. Per federal law, the local school district readily agreed to pay for A.M.’s educational needs since it could not provide such services. The State Agency arranged for A.M. to receive Medicaid so that the costs of his residential placement would be covered. Luckily, his father’s health insurance covered all of his medical expenses. We all breathed a collective sigh of relief knowing that A.M.’s needs would be met in safe and secure environments for many years to come.
My expertise in knowing the “system” allowed me to quickly mobilize forces and get A.M. the help that his family so desperately needed yet could not navigate on their own.
I will continue to work closely with the medical and clinical staff at the psychiatric hospital to insure that A.M. receives optimal medical care. Once he is stable, I will then make sure that he is placed in a residential facility where a proper educational plan will be established and his multiple physical, emotional and mental needs can be met.
Had A.M. received all of the services to which he was entitled at an early age, he and his family would not have experienced such trauma in their lives. Unfortunately, his story is not so unusual and, more often than not, the A.M.’s of the world end up in the juvenile court system and never have treated their multiple academic and psychiatric needs.
I am grateful that through my intervention, knowledge of the laws, and the contacts I have developed over the past thirty (30) years, I was able to change the course of A.M.’s life. It is my hope that he will one day be a productive member of society. My passion for children with special needs fuels my determination, commitment and tenacity which helped to quickly effectuate this positive outcome for A.M. I find this work most rewarding, particularly, where as here, there is a positive end to the story.
