I know a lot of people start blog’s and then give up, which you may have thought happened to Florida Autism Center as we haven’t posted in over 2 weeks. Not so, though. We’ve just been amazingly busy, which is a good thing. I haven’t posted all the things we’ve been busily doing to our blog yet, which is a bad thing. So, here goes . . .

SCHOOL: We made it through our first week of school. Mind you, this was school both in Daytona Beach and in Sanford. I’m pleased to report success in both locations. If I’m not mistaken, both locations have full programming in place for all their kids as of today, and also have their schedule for the entire year completely mapped out (except some TBD field trips). We’re really lucky this year. We’ve got some amazing parents and some really great kids. School is off to a good start with 11 kids. We are adding Daytona Beach kids October 1. We are adding 2 – 4 more Sanford kids in January and might consider another 1 or 2 in Daytona for January as well. Let us know if you’re interested in making the switch – we’ll take waiting list enrollment and see when it makes sense to move you from the public school to our program.

Speaking of waiting list enrollment – it’s time to get it started for January in Winter Park. We have 2 families currently in Sanford who are interested in moving to Winter Park. We need 4 more committed, contracted families before we will begin searching for a building. So, if you’d like to send your child to Florida Autism Center’s Academy program beginning in January, we need to know about it now.

EI: Wow, EI has been through some craziness lately. I’m extremely happy to say things are going along really well with United Healthcare (UBH). Our contract with them is really moving along and we have secured authorizations for kids up to 20 hours per week. Incredible.

Concerning Blue Cross, we’re resubmitting claims from some of our EI summer kids. Apparently the State of Florida has let Blue Cross know ‘in no uncertain terms’ that behavior analyst claims are to be paid. We’re hoping so, because sadly a few of our families had to drop service due to cost, and it’s really not fair when their insurance should be helping. We’ll keep you updated. Currently, we do have some EI spots open. We have one after-school slot in Daytona (3 – 5PM daily) and 3 daytime slots in Sanford (9 – 12 daily).

BIRTHDAY: We’re still working on plans for the FAC 5th Birthday Party. I’ll be posting about it soon.

MATERIALS DRIVE: We pushed our August Materials Drive back to September. If you have outgrown toys and activities, we’d be happy to get them. Jess is still working on her yard sale to create some help for private pay families, so things you have that FAC doesn’t need will go towards that. I hope she chooses the date for the yard sale soon. There is a REALLY old dresser of mine sitting around in the center, looking terrible, and waiting for the yard sale!

GRAD UPDATES: 3 of our babies started public school this week. I’m thrilled to say all 3 did great. So far so good with joining their classrooms and peers. I can’t wait to hear more from their families, which I’ll report on to all of you.

Well, there’s a lot more I could talk about – especially after a 2 week hiatus – but I don’t want this post to be too long . . .

Hey, everyone. As most of you know, I’m off on vacation this week. However, I wanted to send out a quick notice about our open houses.

Sanford’s Open House will be Wednesday (not today, next week!) from 6PM – 7:30PM. Come on in, meet your teacher, and see your classroom. You’re child can learn where his or her cubby is, see where his or her seat is, etc. We hope that familiarizing your child with our center early will help ease the transition for the new school year.

Daytona’s Open House is a little different – it’s open to the public and lasts ALL DAY next Thursday. We’ll be showing our school and EI kids their new home as well as meeting other interested families that aren’t yet registered for service. Our Daytona staff will be available, although Jess won’t be in for a good portion of the day as she will be busy busy busy taking her BCBA exam! Wish her luck (which she doesn’t need – she’s extremely prepared). I’ll post a few more details about the Daytona Open House soon.

Also, I wanted to let everyone know how excited we are about United HealthCare. We got our first auth for a child to receive 20 hours per week of therapy. Yea, United! If your policy falls under the new mandate and has been renewed since April 1st, we’ll be happy to help you get service for your child, too!

I’ll update everyone soon about BCBS. I haven’t been to the office since the new info from FLOIR came out – but I know Jess is starting to resubmit claims. I’ll definitely let you know when that success materializes.

OK – I’m off for the week, so I’m going to wrap up the blog for the night.

For our families with BCBS, please read this: http://fabaworld.org/public_affairs.php
We will be contacting BCBS again on Friday to try to remedy this!

I haven’t posted in awhile. Honestly, I’ve been really busy trying to get staff hired and ready for the upcoming school year, training, buying classroom supplies, etc., but I also hadn’t posted because I’m not so sure many people are reading this blog. I joined this ‘feedburner’ thing that is supposed to track subscriptions, etc. and it keeps saying 0. It’s disheartening. However, I feel like there’s a lot of good and interesting information to share, so I’m going to keep sharing it!

I have a couple meetings in Volusia County tomorrow with people who want to help us expand our services there. The reception in Volusia County has been wonderful. People seem truly grateful for our ABA service, and that’s very refreshing.

I’m really happy with the Sanford location, too. We ended up with a very busy summer. I can’t believe how quickly it’s flown by. We have 10 kids for school and are still growing. We’re at the point of a waiting list for October now. We have a couple EI spots open right now, but I’m guessing by the end of next week we won’t again.

The staff are busy getting the center ready for the upcoming school year. We’re reducing a lot of the clutter – thinning out the toys and moving some things to Daytona as well as packing other things away in the hopes of an Orlando location shortly materializing. We’re pretty excited about our new classroom, even though it did boot me out of my big, beautiful office. It’s going to look great and be a great space in which to learn.

We’ve scheduled our open house events for school parents and community members, but I’m not quite ready to announce the dates as there might be a change for the Daytona location upcoming. In the next few days, I’ll be sure to get the info out, though.

In sad news, we’ve lost a couple kids lately because their insurance hasn’t come through on their claims. We have a couple tricks up our sleeves that I hope will remedy this, and I’ll excitedly post info as soon as we know if our plans are going to work out.

We’re still planning for the big birthday bash in September, and Jess is still working on her yard sale – clean out those closets! August is also the materials drive, so bring us all your old kid stuff and if we can’t use it we’ll put it in the scholarship yard sale. If it’s still around after the yard sale, we’ll be taking remaining items to Children’s Home Society or Community Based Care to give to the Crisis Nursery kids.

Well, I guess that’s all for now. Like I said, there’s a lot of exciting possibilities in the next few days, and I’ll post everything that materializes, I just don’t want to jump the gun. I’ll look forward to reporting lots of good news soon!