State must assist children with disabilities

It is vital that the Texas Legislature support Early Childhood Intervention by providing full funding during the next legislative session and reconsidering the harmful cuts to therapy reimbursement rates because, to put it simply, ECI works. As a pediatrician, I can tell you that ECI improves short- and long-term outcomes of children with developmental delays and disabilities, helping children communicate with their parents, learn to walk and get ready for elementary school.

ECI is a state and federally funded program for families with children, birth to three, with disabilities and developmental delays. ECI incorporates a parenttraining model in which therapists work directly with the child and educate the parents on ways to stimulate their child’s development on a daily basis. There is no other program for children under the age of three that invests so much time and care into the lives of children who are at risk for poor developmental outcomes or the parents who care for them. ECI utilizes the home or daycare environment to provide therapies, which is cost-effective and familiar and comfortable for the child.

As a developmental and behavioral pediatrician, I care for hundreds of children who have benefited from the services that ECI provides. I have heard countless testimonies from parents about how ECI improved the developmental outcomes of their children.

One particular family comes to mind when I think of how ECI changes lives. This child’s parents had tried for many years to conceive. Finally, it happened! They welcomed their little boy to the world. On his first birthday, his parents were concerned because he had no words. His parents patiently waited. They longed to hear him say “mama” and “dada.” By his second birthday, he still had no words. His parents voiced their concern to his pediatrician and a referral was made to ECI. The ECI therapists worked with the child and his family in their home. His parents became better able to understand where he was developmentally and learned helpful strategies to communicate and play with him. They learned to better anticipate his needs while his therapists continued to work with him directly on communication skills. They learned to focus on what he could do rather than what he could not yet do. His parents told me that they feel that their child’s developmental improvement and their increased comfort is largely due to the support they received from ECI. These services weren’t just effective for this family. According to the Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services (DARS), 75 percent of Texas children in ECI showed gains in their knowledge, skills, and social relationships.

Supporting ECI is important in the long-term, not just for the children whom ECI serves, but for the community at large. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), an estimated 1 in 6 children in the U.S. from ages 3-17 years have a developmental disability. When we address these disabilities during the critical years before age three, we give these children a better opportunity to reach their potential and we save taxpayer dollars. According to the National Early Intervention Longitudinal Study, almost half of all children in the program or in similar programs in other states who were at risk of needing costly special education services did not need special education when they arrived in kindergarten.

Early Childhood Intervention works. It helps children. It helps families. It helps society. Continuing to provide support to ECI, and even more important, not to cut funding to ECI, is not only morally and financially the right thing to do, it just makes sense.