Accessing stimulus funding if you’re not on public aid
by Katy
A comment to our post called The stimulus plan: what’s in it for people with autism? prompted me to write more on this issue, because it’s an impoirtant one. The person who commented asked whether parents can access economic recovery funds if their children do not receive Medicaid or Social Security benefits.
The details of how states are going to allocate the economic recovery funds are just now coming out. That means that now is a perfect time for parents to identify the needs of their children and find out if these needs can be met with these funds.
For example, states are getting a significant amount of funds to support special education. School districts will be the recipient of the bulk of these funds. So if your child could benefit from a piece of assistive technology — or a teacher needs additional training to meetyour child’s needs — now is the time to push these ideas.
You can start by talking with your child’s teachers and principal. These new funding increases are a response to long-time demands — by teachers unions, school boards and others — to have Washington fully finance the mandates laid out in the federal law regulating special education.