Families who receive services overwhelmingly say they are grateful for the help they get to care for their young children, but Utah providers are struggling to provide quality services with funding that has been stagnant since 2017.
“I lost one to the school district. They said I’d get $20,000 more a year and summers off. I had no say,” Crystal Ghika said.
Crystal Ghika directs early intervention at Routes for Kids in Washington and San Juan counties.
IDEA Part C services are also known as Early Intervention for Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities. It’s been seven years since the Utah Legislature increased funding for Utah’s Part C early intervention program. Since then, inflation has hit Utah hard and experts are leaving the field.
“We don’t have the budget to give everyone that kind of raise,” Ghika said.
If there’s one thing early interventionists lack, it’s passion, but like everyone else, they need to earn a living.
“If a neighborhood school can make $20,000 a year, that’s more than they can make through early intervention, so that’s a problem,” Tammy Edwards said.
Tammy Edwards worked for Southeast Early Intervention Services, which serves Emery, Grand and Carbon counties. She and Gika have something in common: Their interest in early intervention services began as parents of children who needed them. But Edwards still has to cover the expenses for her family.
“I am expected to meet her needs and cannot do that at the pay level I was given at Early Intervention. … I wanted to stay because I feel like I can be a valuable asset to them and I enjoy working with this group of people,” Edwards said.
So what happens when experts leave?
“To be honest, you end up working with them for a year or two of their first year out of graduate school. So if you’re a speech-language pathologist, you have to support them through their clinical training. That means they’re not 100% on their own yet. So these days, they also need mentors who take the time to help them work independently. A lot of graduate students graduate with a lot of debt. Education is more expensive than it used to be. There’s also a demand for higher degrees. Physiotherapists used to need a master’s degree, but now a doctorate is most common. … That means they expect higher wages,” Ghika said.
“Currently our longest serving qualified therapist has been here for about five years, but all the others have been here for less time,” Ghika said.
Utah funds its Baby Watch early intervention program for 1.7 hours of services per child per month, compared with the national average of 4.7 hours.
“I wouldn’t have even known where to start. You have a baby that doesn’t have special needs and you don’t know what to do, and then you have a baby that does have a little bit of special needs,” Shelby Stanger said.
Shelby Stanger, a Box Elder County mother, said she has received excellent services from the Institute for Disability Research, Policy and Practice’s Up to 3 program.
But in addition to early intervention services, her family also went to Shriners Hospital in Salt Lake City.
“I think families need therapy services more than once or twice a month, and I think it would make a big difference, and I know that not many families have as much time as we do,” Stanger said.
“In some cases, we know that a child really needs it and we have to help families find additional resources outside of the home. Research shows that children learn best in their natural environment, their natural environment. If we have to send a child to a clinic or other places, we know that’s not the best situation, but sometimes that’s all we can do,” Ghika said.