I'm in Nor Cal. Our regional center person will go with us to the IEP if we ask. It's good to have them as your advocate once your child is diagnosed. The school will provide most services after 3 years old I think. Since the districts are all broke - they try to offer as little as possible. Then you may get ABA through the Regional Center. It was difficult for me because since my son could do the academic stuff they stopped offering services for the emotional & social parts.

I have found having someone with actual medical training and specialization in ASD has been useful to have assess outside of the school system. The school is limited in its knowledge and resources, and to be honest my err on the side of giving less instead of more due to budgetary concerns.

Having the outside assessment allows you to compare the reports, and having the child seen in a different environment at a different time of day may also give a better overall evaluation. We had our outside assessment done by our son's neurologist in Boston, and then we compared notes between what the school came up with and what the neurologist stated. That was incredibly helpful to have the medical expert state what was needed.

Now, in my state, they can take into consideration what the outside expert's opinion is, but they don't have to accept it and act on it. They would be wise to, but they're not forced by law to. I don't know how it works where you are.

As far as what goes on, I've never seen how the school's assessment is conducted - I've only seen the report. For the neurologist's assessment, they measured the circumference of my son's head, tested his reflexes, how his eyes followed fingers or a light, motor strength, running/skipping ability. The doctor then observed him while asking my husband and I questions about his behavioral patterns, issues we face, etc. The doctor was looking to see how our son reacted to the environment he was in, how he tried to communicate with others, and how active he was in the tiny room we were in. We had to fill out some questionnaires as well, which were then scored. We also scheduled a separate independent speech/language evaluation too, and that took about 90 minutes in total. We felt it was important to have the outside assessments. We are fortunate in that our insurance plan covers these, however they can be pricy if you have to pay for them yourself. The neurologist visit was about $500 and the speech/language visit was slightly higher than that.

We have been pleased with having both the school and the outside assessments done as each concurred enough, but also highlighted areas of concern that the school missed but the medical experts picked up on. That was where our talking points began during his IEP meeting.

I hope this helps.

Forgot to mention that the school district has DD in a social skills training group. The RC used to pay for private social skills but again they're trying to pass the buck off to my health insurance. Here I thought the mandate was going to be a good thing, but it has resulted in a lower level of service than she would've been entitled to before the mandate.

My DD had 3 evaluations within a very short time frame. The first was a private eval by a developmental pediatrician in November. Then in December, the school district did its IEP evaluation. Then in January, the Regional Center did theirs. DD did the ADOS 3 times, with 3 different results. The developmental pediatrician said she met the ASD criteria for both language and social interaction. The school district psychologist said she met it for language, but not social interaction. The Regional Center said she met it for social interaction, but not language. I thought she had performed similarly all 3 times. The school district placed her into an autism SDC for 25 hrs/week plus 2x week speech. She didn't qualify for OT through them. She is getting private OT through our health insurance plus private speech. The Regional Center at the moment is doing jack squat for her because they and our health insurance are fighting over who has to pay for ABA. The RC says the insurance is supposed to but the insurance says they are exempt from the mandate.

We have Insurance through an exempt policy too - ERISA. Since our insurance wouldn't cover - then the regional center paid for the ABA. We need some OT but haven't looked into it yet. There is little done at school - but I believe the teacher is overwhelmed - and that is putting it mild. Having 5 or 6 kids and at east 3 in wheelchairs - I don't think my compliant non-verbal flapping boy gets much attention. He needs so much more then he is getting. Our next issue is trying to see what trauma he may have been exposed to and how that may be affecting his behavior.