What exactly is a TSS's job

[Donna Kay Langan]

Recently our BSC went on maternity leave. She left us after an updated Behavioral Plan and two TSS's assigned 20 hours each for my son. We get 40 hours a week.
Tyler is in a full time medical day care facilities so he receives all his personal needs like diapering and feeding through them. HOWEVER as part of the behavior plan it is noted that Tyler should have hand over hand assistance and redirection as part of his program. Also because he is non verbal he tends to take the hand of his support person and leads them to where he wants to go.

When the new BSC came she immediately terminated our AM TSS and then instituted a "NO TOUCH" policy which she told me was mandated by law. This just seems ridiculous to me. So currently the new TSS sits on her behind "observing" my child run amouck with no where to turn! I have witnessed this on 2 seperate occassions. Last week I did not make myself known this week I did. I asked to TSS to leave and not come back to work with Tyler. Her response was "fine I was leaving at the end of the month anyway cause I can't work with him, no one can. He has a terminal condition and we just can't service this kind of child who has behavior issues from a medical problem"

To make this worse, that this has been happening for almost a month now unbeknown to us.

Today when speaking to the new BSC she told me, Tyler wasn't really a child they could help, she was rewriting the treatment plan and working with her superiors to get us assigned somewhere else.

I am confused, appalled, hurt and angry. Tyler was doing so well before all this happened. He now hates to go to day care and my heart aches for him.
What can I do?

[Deb]

Hi Donna,

I am so sorry to hear about this! Have you tried calling the Education Law Center? Maybe someone there would know the rules or at least know how to connect you with someone who would know. Please let us know what happens with this.

[Donna Kay Langan]

Hi Debbie,
After another attempt at calling the agency with no help, I contacted CBHNP. Just looking over the rights I have as a consumer it was obvious things wern't right. CBHNP told me a few things:
First off the treatment plan MUST be followed unless another treatment plan has been designed approved and signed! Some new TSS or BSC can not go in and just ignore what's already in place.
Second a TSS can not bill for hours the child is sleeping and third the particular agency I work with has a no restraint policy (thank God) not a no touch policy. Further more my communications with the BSC and TSS were less then professional on their part.The care manager told me I have several options and the one I want to proceed with first is calling a team meeting. This will include the agency, the new BSC, TSS, myself and the CBHNP care manager as a mediator. The agency has been notified as of this afternoon and apparently has jumped to start an investigation. How much easier this could have been if they only returned my calls...
At any rate we are supposed to set up a meeting by next week. The agency has until Monday to make outreach complete (contact me). I am hoping everything gets ironed out in the meeting. If my only advice could be heeded it's to listen to your intuition...Tyler has been off ever since this whole debacle started. I wish I would have done something sooner, but in ignorance, I thought they were doing their job...I had faith in the system and the system failed. Parents stay on top of this!
Wish me luck for next week.

[Deb]

Wow. Thanks for posting this. I'm sure other parents will find this information useful. You got this taken care of in a hurry. Good luck next week.

[Vicci]

I'm sorry you were treated so poorly and glad that you are on top of them and getting some help to get the mess cleared up.

We gave up on Wraparound services about 3 years ago b/c, to be honest, we found them to be totally useless. Staff was poorly trained, if trained at all, and never stuck around for very long, so we decided that it would be less detrimental to our son to just forego Wraparound all together.

I hope that you have much better luck once you get the kinks worked out!

[Donna Kay Langan]

Hi Vicci,
It's such a shame, because in theory the whole wraparound idea is great if like you said the staff were trained and supervised appropriately. It does seem in our experience that the TSS's we had were all on their way to something else and this was just a job to them. However recently we have had continuity in care and have had the same TSS for almost 9 months and the other for almost 6 months. It has been an amazing the difference it made for Tyler. That is why this upset me so much. The system was working, they were making progress and then the rug gets pulled out from underneath us and now we have regression, and all these "meeting" to get everything back together. I too am hoping to get the help I need to figure this out.
Thanks for the support.

[Mary Ann Donovan]

Hi Donna,

It is important to keep in touch with the Behavioral Health MCO if you have difficulty with services and the provider isn't responsive; particularly when they can't fulfill a prescribed service. Glad to see that you were steered in that direction.
This is a situation that is good to bring to the attention of others.... we often don't know our rights and the provider's responsibilities.
Wish you and your family better success and soon!

Mary Ann