Services from Regional Center

The RC's local to the Bay Area are 

• San Andreas Regional Center - covers Santa Clara County www.sarc.org

• Golden Gate Regional Center - covers San Mateo, Marin & SF counties www.ggrc.com

• Regional Center of East Bay - covers Alameda & Contra Costa Counties  www.rceb.org

Eligibility

Eligibility includes "Autism" according to their website. 

To be eligible for RC services the individual must have a developmental disability which is both significant & expected to continue indefinitely. Section 4512 of the California Welfare and Institutions Code.

Criteria for determining the eligibility of infants and toddlers  Section 95014 of the California Government Code.

I have heard that many times the RC will try to give diagnosis of PDD to avoid funding services so check the above websites for specifics. 

Services Summary

According to their website RC's provide/coordinate the following services. 

• Information and referral
• Assessment and diagnosis
• Counseling
• Lifelong individualized planning and service coordination
• Purchase of necessary services included in the individual program plan
• Resource development
• Outreach
• Assistance in finding and using community and other resources
• Advocacy for the protection of legal, civil and service rights
• Early intervention services for at risk infants and their families
• Genetic counseling
• Family support
• Planning, placement, and monitoring for 24-hour out-of-home care
• Training and educational opportunities for individuals and families
• Community education about developmental disabilities

In reality, this is what I've seen them provide

Under Age 3 - The RC is responsible for funding all "appropriate" services for the child.  

• In the case for Autism, these may include ABA, Speech, OT & Early Start (Special Ed eg: in south bay it is at Chandler Tripp School) 
• RC's prefer to provide these services through one of their vendors. Since they are a large consumer, they get preferred rates from their vendors so it is usually harder to convince them to fund a non-vendor. While for most part, vendors are of decent quality, this may not always be the case especially for Speech and OT. 
• The popular vendors for ABA services currently seem to be "Stepping Stones" and "I can Play" in South Bay. 
• The RC does not easily provide any of the above services. You usually will have to provide justification and may need to to take a parent advocate. I've heard of cases where the RC team gives the child a PDD label in order to avoid funding services. 

Ages 5-18: The RC mainly provides Respite Care / Day Care. If you ask them for anything else, the standard response is - the school district is responsible for those services.
They do pay for parent training on various topics to help you manage your case but this seems to be on an individual basis.

For ages 18-above? - Other than respite, still a mystery. I assume there would be something else as the kids are no longer under the purview of the school district.

Respite Care

1. What is Respite?

• Respite is for "you the parent". Its to give you a break/relief from your child.
• The last thing the RC wants is for the parents to have a breakdown - then they are responsible for your child. Essentially this is babysitting so that you can relax.
  It is nice to have a few hrs away from your child to maintain your sanity.
• The downside is that the respite workers are just that - they are not obliged to improve your child like a therapist - just to make sure they are safe. They are nice people but in no way are they therapists so don't expect miracles during the time they spend with your child - your child will be "safe" with them but you also want something more out of it if you can.
• It helps if you can work on them doing activities that is not only easy for the respite worker & at the same time your child is not vegetating.
  
  eg: since physical activities are the ones that are most physically tiring for me, I have them take my kid on bike rides, to the park/playground, to the mall, walks, outside play, take them swimming etc. My kid is productive and its not rocket science for the respite care worker. They can easily spend 2-3 hrs doing this. When they come home, she supervises him playing on the computer or watching TV.
  Your kid needs to do those activities anyway & it does not require too much skills from the respite worker. It also saves you from doing these.

2. How many hrs of Respite can you get?

• From what I understand most parents get standard 24 hrs/month.  I believe for RC to give you more hours they require more approvals. 
• As your kid gets older,  the RC tries to shorten the hours with the argument that since your child is in school till 2:30pm, you don't need so many hours.
• It also depends on the disability of your kid and what kind of issues are present eg: hyperactive children can be exhausting for parent. 

3. Two ways you can use/get Respite Hrs

• Through an agency
• Parent as vendor

4. Respite Care through a respite agency

The RC can link you up with an respite agency who will provide the people for you. eg: CAR in Palo Alto

Advantages

• You don't have to go around searching for people - the agency provides the person for you,
• The agency makes a good effort to match the care worker with your child. eg: if you child is say very energetic(hyperactive) its best to say that up front so that they try to find a energetic person to keep up with the child. They try to make a good match & send the respite care worker over to meet you & you child for an initial (interview) visit. You can decide if this person works for you or not. (You can always reject that person later on as well if you are not comfortable with
  her)
• The respite care workers are trained in CPR & have had criminal background checks, some minimal field training etc

Disadvantages

• I find that most of the time, they want to come if you have a regular schedule for them eg: for 3 hrs each Mon from 5-8pm. When it comes down to a sudden date they may or may not be able to accommodate sudden changes. The manager does however try her best to find you a replacement.
• The agency does not always have people (depending on availability) suited to your child's profile. So sometimes you can go for months without any respite care worker.
• The way the SARC services are set up, you may be locked up with one agency & so even if they did not have people, its hard to switch in the middle of the year.
• Like with any other situation, there is again a high turnover of respite care workers. Considering they are paid only around $10 and taking care of our kids is not easy, this is not surprising. So just make the most of it when they have people available.
• If you don't use the hours, you lose it. You can ask for the contract to be set up so that the hours can be carried over month to month. If you don't ask for this SARC usually does not give it to you, so make sure you do. However I believe the max they can do this for a 6 month period. Also as their financial year ends in June end, all contracted hrs have to be used by then eg: I had 48 hrs accumulated by beginning of Jun which I had finish by end of Jun but managed to get through barely half that amount.
• The agency usually pays only around $10 + a little bit more for mileage (from their home to yours) to their respite care workers. However if you go over the allotted limit with one of their folks officially, they will bill you close to $20/hr. (If you do need more hrs than what SARC has allotted, try to work out an unofficial deal with the same respite care worker)
  BTW you are expected to pay for any extra mileage (eg: if you want them to take your child swimming each week and they have to drive your kid up and down some 20 miles). My respite worker informed me that her agency was no longer covering these extra miles for her so requested me to pay for it - said she used to get paid $0.31/mile.

5. Parent as Vendor

• You find people to do the babysitting
• you invoice SARC at end of each month for the number of hrs allotted to you.
  In the invoice, you need to give name of person, age, dates & times worked & number of hrs
• SARC reimburses you $8.57/hr

Advantages

• You have more control over who is with your kid.
• If the agency fails to give you a person, you can at least go out and get your own people.

Disadvantages

• you have to find the person
• extra paperwork 

6. Combo of “Parent as Vendor” & “Respite through a Respite Agency”

• You can also ask for the hrs to be split between the above 2 scenarios.

Day Care Hours

For working parents, SARC does cover some fund towards "Day Care Hours". I am however not sure of the details.

Parent Trainings

SARC also provides funding for select parent trainings. Some of the parent training at PHP for example state that SARC funding may be available for these.