Jack’s story

Our son Jack was diagnosed with autism when he turned two years old. At about a year and a half, we noticed he had absolutely no type of communication whatsoever with the family and brought him to a center to have him tested.

Because of his early age, he was able to qualify through our insurance plan, for what is called “early intervention services”, in other words, all kinds of therapy services until a child reaches three years of age. Unfortunately, by the time Jack turned 3, just about a year and a half into therapy, he was just beginning to learn how to deal and make progress with his numerous issues, such as feeding, developmental, speech, and communication.

I think it is unbelievable that parents need to make a choice between their child developing like any other human being or being able to pay for the needs of their family. It is really a hardship on us, to have to mortgage our credit cards, get into whatever debt we need to get into, in order to be able to pay for thousands of dollars a year for therapy.

In our economic climate, we need a lot of help, as these special need kids truly benefit and make obvious progress with therapy. They are regressing and loosing the skills they had worked so hard to reach.
This is not right, this is not human. We need the help of everyone and hope this reaches as many people as we can.

Arlene Weissberg