3 Resources for Military Parents of Kids with Special Needs
July 22, 2015
A post by AngelSense, a GPS & voice monitoring solution designed for children with special needs.
Learn more about how AngelSense’s GPS tracking device can help improve your child’s safety and well-being.
Families who have children with special needs understand the importance of a daily routine, strong community as well as medical and educational support services. These families dread the upheaval and enormous stress caused by change, such as the separation from and extended absence of a parent, or moving to a new place, not to mention the stress of dealing with never-ending paperwork.
It’s estimated that 1 in 88 children of active duty military service members has some form of autism spectrum disorder, and 1 in 10 service members has a family member with a special need or disability. These military families are forced to juggle stresses related to deployment (every 2 – 4 years on average) with the management of their child’s special needs care and education in each new location.
Military families often find themselves in the situation where they must move from a place with adequate or even excellent services to a new city with poor services or none at all.
Even in places with good services and advocacy, as a new arrival at each deployment site, the child will inevitably end up at the bottom of very long waiting lists. What’s more, the paperwork involved in renewing previous care services is overwhelming, complicated, and riddled with government and military bureaucracy.
What are military parents of children with special needs to do in this predicament?
Fortunately, resources are available to military families that can be used as a starting point and as a way to connect with other families in similar situations. In fact, more often than not, military parents with special needs children are the best resources for one another. Community support is crucial to all families with children with special needs and nowhere is that more strongly felt than in the military.
Here are three places to click on for more resources and information:
1. Our friends at The Friendship Circle have compiled a great list of resources for military parents of children with special needs.
2. If you’re new to the military or have a recent diagnosis, your first step should be the Department of Defense Special Needs Parent Tool Kit , which covers children from birth to age 18, with modules on Tricare benefits (the military’s health care program) and other resources.
3. Military parents of special needs children recently won a victory with The Disabled Military Child Protection Act, signed into law by President Obama in Dec. 2014. This law allows a military parent to provide a survivor benefit for a disabled child by paying it to a special needs trust for that child’s benefit. Above all, this trust does not take the place of, or preclude, the child’s ability to receive Medicaid or access other government programs.
Do you have any recommendations for useful resources for military families who have children with special needs? Share your suggestions in the comments below.
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