Hi shep and em! Do shep and em have advice about “assessment” for developmental disability services? Here using “Supports Intensity Scale”. What happens what to expect? Anon is anxious because reading assessment is many hours and very important. Thank you!
You have to have a minimum of two people with you who have known you in daily life settings for at least four months, at least, that's the requirement where I'm from. My first time around I brought my sister and my dad. When I was reassessed for a higher level (more support) later, I brought my executive functioning coach and my social worker. You can bring as many people as you want though.
They have a bunch of categories of areas of need, things like eating, bathing, self dressing, to walking, navigating the home, navigating public spaces, and more advanced things like cooking, cleaning, money management, etc.
They ask the questions in a way that gets a view of the intensity of the needed support, e.g "can the person perform the task: fully independently; with reminders; with verbal prompting; with physical assistance; not at all" and the amount of time a person needs the support for, e.g " less than once a week; once a week or more but not every day; every day but not more than once an hour; 24 hours" and the 24 hours one is tricky to remember, because it means literally 24 hours day and night. If someone needs 24 hour care for, say, monitoring their ventilator (I made that up, Idk if it's a real thing) then they would need to have eyes on them every moment of the day and night.
They care less about your diagnosis, and more about what you can do, how independently you can do it, and how long a caregiver should expect to spend helping you with the task.
Don't be nervous, it's not pass fail- at the point where you've reached the interview stage, they know you definitely need support, and the assessment just determines how much. Good luck!
