What is happening with seit???

shlomki

Tue, Oct 13 2015, 2:06 am

I work for a popular agency in Brooklyn...
Basically, the BOE used to allot a certain amount of money per child each year and the agency's would try to cash out on all the money, hence the paid collaboration, paid absences, SEIT conferences, equipment. Now they changed it to pay per session/ hr and the agency's lost out A LOT. They also increased the collaboration by a great amount - and it won't be paid for at all. Some of our therapists got cut by $10/hr!
Not sure if this really helped with anyone's decision making but just thought I'd shed some light on the matter...

seeker

Wed, Apr 26 2017, 4:24 pm

1. Cases seem more available than they were in the past. Not sure what this is attributable to but several agencies seem to be looking for providers. As always, there is more of that in middle of the year when new cases get approved and old providers are already booked. But people who are willing to stretch themselves for those midyear additions are often given priority at the beginning of the next year.

2. DOE continues to be stingy about summer but I do know of numerous cases that are going through the 12 months. But don't expect to have some other job during the year and just pop in for the summer cases - again, priority always goes to the people who were there where needed during the year.

3. What was said before about rates dropping and demands rising is true and unfortunate. It especially stinks when you have a kid absent a lot because there used to be some compensation since the agency was paid by the year, now if the kid is not there then the service is not received and you get nothing, even though you had to reserve your time for that case. DOE policies are so abusive to providers. And you have to do a lot of indirect service which means things like conferencing with parents, there's a required amount of time which is a LOT (I forget, something like 25% of the amount of time you're with the kid?) and is not counted as part of your session time. So if you have a 10 hour case, you have to do the full 10 hours with the kid PLUS 2 hours of prep/conferencing/whatever per week but you are only paid for the 10 hours with the kid. And some cases really don't even need that much prep, especially if you've been doing this long enough that you have a repertoire at your fingertips. Grrr!

4. I have heard that some agencies are willing to strike deals with providers that if you are willing to commit to working full time, they will give it to you as a salaried job which would theoretically pay less per hour but then you don't lose anything for things like kids absent, school vacations, a certain number of sick days, etc.

5. Somehow it seems that some SEITs are still making a higher rate but I have no idea how. And people who get private cases are still getting private cases and getting paid very nicely straight from the DOE because they have no agency overhead, but again I have no idea how they're doing that because most cases get funneled straight to the agencies. They must have a lot of well-placed friends or something.

amother

Scarlet

Wed, Apr 26 2017, 6:53 pm

Agencies are looking for providers because many providers began working for pendency agencies which have only recently began to operate thereby increasing the amount of children receiving pendency hours.
Pendency cases get paid more than SEIT. It was a loss for providers though because up until these agencies came about, most pendency cases were dealt with straight thru the DOE and providers got the full amount. But parents prefer to go thru these agencies because it's a lot simpler and they have to pay a lot less to fight it out.

Some agencies pay more for bilingual SEITs. As a bilingual SEIT, my rate did not decrease at all.

seeker

Wed, Apr 26 2017, 7:26 pm

amother wrote:

What is pendency?

Pendency is a rule that if a parent disagrees with the district's decision to change the child's IEP, then the old IEP remains in place until an agreement is reached.
So in this case, what it means is that the child had SEIT in preschool, suppose 10 hours. The child is turning 5 so they hold a meeting to transfer them to a school-age IEP. First of all, there is no such thing as SEIT in school age, and secondly they are almost invariably stingier than the preschool people. So they say the new plan is to give the child 5 hours a week of SETSS. So the parent says I disagree, that does not meet my child's needs, so we will stick with the old IEP until this is settled. At this point you really need a lawyer or expert advocate because the Dept of Ed will start bullying you. Essentially what happens is that they drag on the appeals process so long that the child can keep receiving SEIT for years well past preschool. The catch is that I think you can't really add anything new either because that would require accepting a change, and once you accept a change then the pendency is over.