Special Needs Child Care

Heather Duncan has a lengthy look at the trouble the parents of kids with special needs have finding child care in Middle Georgia. Link to story here.. http://tinyurl.com/2eyl4ru ..

In shooting the story, the images divided into two separate streams. Some of the first stream, images from a daycare center for medically vulnerable children, ran in the Telegraph and macon.com. The other stream, which went unpublished, I'll share here.

William Meelaphsom is a nine year old autistic boy. According to his grandmother and primary caretaker Marcie Meelaphsom, she needs the help of both William's mother Mara and Andrea Stone, a home health nurse who has been with William since he was 3, just to keep up with her grandson.

William has little fear for injuring himself and is largely nonverbal. Here Andrea Stone, left, Mara Meelaphsom, right, and Marcie Meelaphsom, in the mirror, manage to get William out the door and on the way to speech therapy.



The speech issue seemed tough for William. He has things to to say, but just can't easily communicate them. Here Marcie goes to great lengths to get William to explain why he is upset. Direct eye contact and some signing looked to be important tools.



Andrea Stone, William's home health nurse, is incredibly devoted to him. By her own accounting, she has spent most days over the last six years with him. While following her car from the Meelaphsom's home to the therapist's office, I saw her carrying on a conversation with him, pointing out animals on the side of the road, keeping him company. I'm sure it goes deeper than good company. Here they wait together for William's speech therapy appointment.



This is the sort of care that kids like William, who benefits from good care in his public school, still need in the home. Hey, the parents need it, too. Raising kids is hard. Raising kids with medical conditions that the doctors themselves only partly understand has to be exponentially harder yet.