Therapy for home-schooled kids

amother

Mon, Apr 13 2020, 6:22 am

Hi,
I am possibly debating switching my child to home school permanently and wanted to know if there is a way to still get the services they get in a normal school (OT, speech etc).
Can they be done online or need to be in person? Will I have to pay or will I still get them for free as they are eligible in a normal school?
Thank you for your time

amother

Hotpink

Mon, Apr 13 2020, 7:57 am

Depends where you live. In Ohio, if you choose not to send your kid to public school but they have an IEP, then you get money from the Jon Peterson scholarship (state funded) to cover the cost of services they would otherwise have received in school. They are NOT eligible to get services through the district once you decide to pull them out of public school.

As an SLP, I would say that if your kid is working on artic (their speech sounds) or something similar, you could do speech therapy via video conferencing and it would be fine. Be aware that you or another adult would need to sit next to the kid the whole time and be heavily involved. But for kids with significant special needs, teletherapy is often not the best option. It's hard to keep them engaged and productive. I would say the same for OT--you would likely need to go in person for OT, it would be hard to do remotely.