A San Francisco couple, parents of a child with autism, stand accused of defrauding their school district and health insurer out of $400,000, according to a San Francisco Chronicle report mentioned on the blog Disability Scoop. Apparently, they created their own company to provide educational services for their child at home, and then billed both the district and the insurer for the same services.
Part of me is appalled at the abuse of taxpayer dollars, at the way things like this will cause insurers to have even less sympathy for families seeking services, at the callous disregard for the bad will that backlashes onto all special-needs students when wealthy families game the system for their own child's benefit.
And part of me, I can't help it, reads about this set-up and whispers: Sweet.
Who among us hasn't fantasized about what you might do if you had total control over your child's educational program, total decision-making over how school resources were used to help your child, total cooperation from insurers. I'm sure at some point, this seemed like a good idea to these parents, to be able to create a state-of-the-art program and then maybe share it with other families. Charges against them say that they were not qualified to provide those services, nor were the doctors they used. But any parent who's spent much time with special-ed and specialists will certainly have had the experience of feeling more knowledgeable and competent than a "qualified" professional.
At some point, things must have spun out of control for this family. When a child's disability becomes the family's sole occupation, it's pretty hard to keep perspective. Though IEP teams can often be a source of enormous frustration for parents, there's value in the team concept, and when it's done right, it benefits everyone, the child most of all. Parents shouldn't be fully in charge any more than the school should be.
Kinda tempting to think about, though, isn't it? You know, without the criminal charges and jail time part.
Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
No.never. now we are all suspect when we ask for help for our children.