What to Do If Your Family Has Been Denied Early Intervention Services

What to Do If Your Family Has Been Denied Early Intervention Services

Language Development State Resources

You, as a parent, know that your young child could use a boost in his or her language development, but your local Early Intervention (EI) program has deemed your child not sufficiently delayed to warrant funded therapy services. So what do you do now that you’ve been denied Early Intervention Services? This is an agonizing question to have to face. Unfortunately, as a consequence of the 2008-2009 financial crisis, many states sharply cut back on available funds for EI. I thought this was a terrible decision. What better investment in society is there than in the very young? And the research is strong and clear: intervening early in a child’s development can have an outsized impact on their overall development.

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New York Early Intervention Program

State Resources
NYS Map by County

Image source: Health.ny.gov

Early intervention services are designed to assist children with developmental delays or disabilities, from birth to 3 years old. Early intervention is federally mandated, but it is administered through the state governments. In New York, the Bureau of Early Intervention is part of the NYS Department of Health. It administers the New York State Early Intervention Program (EIP). EIP was established in Article 25 of the NY Public Health Law. You can read the regulations in their entirety here.

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