Re:Any success with brain impaired persons?

hello
my son has a traumatic brain injury. he was shaken when he was 6 months old. his behavior was so bad that we had to baker act him 3x. i have been begging everyone in the state for help. the state recently took our son and said that they were going to help him and our family. the manatee county school system deliberately placed him in a mentally handicapped category, 1st dev. del. and then TMH. this was done to facilitate their budget. we fought long and hard to get our son services and now the state has put him in a foster home, he is getting a lot less therapy and the school that he's going to is a C grade school when he was at an A grade school. we asked every agency that we could find, the courts, the state, even the president. when everyone finds out that our son needs long term, residential placement with all the therapies that he's nonrehabible they send us some where else or put us on a list. tell us they're sorry and that there's nothing they can do. they don't know how we do it by our selves. the school system placed our son incorrectly so that they wouldn't have to pay for residential and the courts and the state is treating him as though he has a mental disorder. we have given our son several medications because of this and they all made his behavior worse. the courts ordered him to take risperdol which is not approved for children and has lowered his glucose to 54 when his low side is 65. we fear that the state is truing to make his brain damage worse as to make him a vegetable our son is now in the Hillsborough County school system. the state has moved him out of the county that we live in. this has placed a burden on us to visit with him. Hillsborough school board said that we couldn't get any records or test results until he graduates. my parental rights have not been taken away.
if you would like to talk to me or my wife or maybe you know someone who would be interested in helping our family feel free to pass this on to them. this is only a small portion of what has happened to our family and i am trying everything i can to get people to tell the state to treat brain injuries as the president ordered in 1996. when he passed the TBI Act and ordered the states to find the best way to treat and understand TBI's. in 1998 the national institute of health released a concensus on the best way to treat TBI's a guide and every agency will not acknowledge this as a guide but simply a suggestion. all these state agencies treat our son in a mentally ill category because Medicaid dose not pay for long term placement and they don't pay for behavior therapy unless it's in a hospital. every school has refused behavior therapy and only offered behavior strategies by the teacher who is trained by the behavior therapist. ? anyway i could go on forever. thanks for your time

Ron and Shawn Evans
2711 15th Ave. W.
Bradenton, Fla., 34205
941-750-8351
rsr4l@aol.com

When my son was 6 months old, he was a victim of Shaken Baby Syndrome resulting in a
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). He has severe behavior problems, is legally blind, has limited use
of his left side, and although he just turned 6 years old has a cognitive age of a 2-3 year old. We
have been to every agency from city to county to state to recieve help for our son and family. All
we have been told is there is nothing that can be done for him. The School board of Manatee
County refused to recognize our son as having a TBI, they have labeled him Trainably Mentally
Handicapped ( TMH ). The School Board said if we get proper documentation to state he was
TBI, they would label him so. Our sons Neurologist wrote a letter stating our son had a TBI , the
School Board still refused to label him properly saying he will recieve the same services. Even
though we had a prescription from our sons psychiatrist stating he needs one on one Behavior
Therapy to control his violent outbursts, the School Board said “ absolutely not “ and he kept
recieving Behavior Strategies where a therapist would come in and teach the teacher on what to
do. Three schools and two years later, our son recieves Ocupational Therapy, Physical Therapy,
Speech Therapy and Behavior Strategies. We also requested Vision Therapy. The older our son
gets, the more sporadic and unpredictable his behavior becomes. He has been Baker Acted 3
times in the past year. The medication that has been prescribed to him has either made him
worse or has no effect at all. The last time he was Baker Acted the state sheltered him for the
safety of the other children in the home. Two months later, he was moved to a Therapeutic
Foster Home in Hillsborough County. Now , four months later, he is in his second Foster Home,
and The Hillsborough County School Board will not let us have any access to our sons records
until he graduates. After a visit with him we were told by the Mentor program that he was only
recieving Occupational and Speech Therapy in School.

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