Guest Opinion | The State of California is not Doing Enough to Support Children with Developmental Delays

When my younger brother, Randev, was two years old my family and I noticed a few things about his behavior. He often wouldn’t respond when we called his name. He had a hard time pronouncing certain words, he was often triggered by fast paced and emotional cartoons, he was having trouble playing with others, and he was also turned off by foods with certain textures and extreme flavors.

While some of his actions did comply with “normal toddler behavior,” we noticed that it was something much more. So my family and I took a big step and decided to get him evaluated on the autism spectrum.

We took him to our Regional Care Center in Alhambra, which provides low income families and their children with evaluations, therapies, and resources. They proceeded to take him away, move him to a small room with a few toys, and ask him to build certain things, respond to certain prompts, pass them certain toys and pieces, and concluded by asking my mom lots of questions regarding his day-to-day behavior.

He was too young, they said, to be properly evaluated, but they noticed that he did show signs of an early speech delay and of a sensory processing disorder. Of course this was hard for my family. All you want for your child or your loved one is the easiest route in life, and we feared that with these challenges life would pose more difficulties for him.

But we were blessed to find so many resources. We enrolled him in Good to Grow, a center for developing kids, and he was also in occupational and speech therapy once a week. We used all the resources available, but in the end found ourselves fighting for more.

Our regional care center refused to provide the additional services that we knew Randev needed. They claimed his case wasn’t serious enough to put more resources into.

The issue was simply that they didn’t have enough money to provide us with resources. Resources, they claimed, went to more “serious” cases. But really they are just underfunded.

All kids, no matter their financial status, should have a chance to grow and develop. Regional care centers need more funding, and schools and parents need more resources to help support their young children who have developmental delays.

In 2013, the Association of Regional Care Centers wrote a report about the funding of their centers. They broke it down, claiming California had a responsibility to people with developmental disabilities set forth under The Lanterman Developmental Disabilities Services Act, which states, “The State of California accepts a responsibility for persons with developmental disabilities and an obligation to them which it must discharge.”

The state, acting on this law, decided to create 21 Regional Care Centers.

These centers, which are the “primary safety net for Californians with developmental disabilities” receive $4.1 billion in federal and state funds, but claim they are severely underfunded.

Randev is five now, has graduated from Cottage Coop Nursery School, has played on a soccer team, attended social-play-based therapy, is getting ready for Kindergarten, and still has tough days regulating his behavior.

Earlier this year we sat down with the regional care center of Alhambra and declared, with the support of his teachers, that Randev needed more support. We didn’t win.

It goes to show you that kids fly under the radar every day. My brother needs support from these centers. He needs support from the state, which claims to be responsible for “persons with developmental disabilities and” have “an obligation to them,” under the Lanterman Developmental Disabilities Act.

California has an obligation to my brother and to the 40,000 children under the age of 3 with a disability or a significant developmental delay that have been served in California (Hopkinson). I have a responsibility to my brother, my best friend, but knowing this problem exists means I also have a responsibility to 40,000 other kids too.

Now that you know this problem exists you have a responsibility too. We need to demand that California allocate more money to its regional care centers and to the 40,000 children they serve. We need to create petitions, talk to our local representatives, and take to the streets, to support children who can’t support themselves.

I want to see kids supported.