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Questions
You May Have About CARD
Can I Have My Child Diagnosed At CARD? No,
CARD staff are not able to perform diagnostic evaluations, due to our
legislative directives, but we will help families find qualified professionals
if they are seeking a diagnosis.
It is not uncommon for parents to call us for information on where
they can go for a diagnostic evaluation if they need one for their
child and do not know where to start. CARD-USF does not do psychological
or medical evaluations or make a diagnosis, but we can give you a list
of practitioners who can. The diagnosis can be made by a physician,
such as a pediatrician, psychiatrist or neurologist, or by a licensed
psychologist. Often, the professional making the diagnosis will recommend
that the parent call CARD.
What Does CARD Do? CARD is here as your source of
information for autism related questions. The level of service depends
upon the need. Often, a phone consultation will be all that is needed
to solve an autism related problem that your family may be experiencing
or to answer a question that you may have. If you live within our
catchment area (counties listed on our home page), you can call CARD-USF
any time that you have a question that pertains to autism or related
disability and one of our professional staff will try to respond
to your question during a phone consultation. Most of the time questions
can be answered within a day or two. Other times questions may require
some research in order to provide answers and that may take longer.
If it is determined that you may need more support than can be provided
by written material or a phone call, then you will be asked to do
an intake with us. (See CARD-USF Supports for additional information
on services.)
When you call CARD, we will register you by placing you on our mailing
list to receive our conference announcements, workshop flyers, and
our newsletter. The mailing list is not shared with any other agency
outside of CARD. If for some reason you would prefer not to be on our
mailing list, you can advise us of that when you call.
What Do Families Need to Do Access CARD? Give us a call or
send an email. We will ask for some preliminary information to be able
to register you on our mailing list and to begin the intake process.
This initial call to us usually takes 5 - 10 minutes over the phone
and we will gather contact information and a brief history about the
individual with autism. Once we have your contact information, we will
send an information packet to you which will include an application
for services, and a release that you will need to sign and return to
us. You will also need to provide us with a copy of an evaluation or
IEP that can be used as proof of eligibility. Once eligibility has been
determined a CARD consultant will be assigned to you and he or she will
help determine the level of service that your family needs.
How Long Will You Stay Involved? CARD is intended to be
a short term service for most families, however, CARD is here as long as
we are needed. We will work together to determine the level of services that
are needed and the best method for providing them.
How Often Can We Call You? You can call us as
often as you need. We are here to be a source of information
about autism and to provide answers to your questions.
What are some additional supports available by CARD that may
impact my child, family, and community? Our services reflect
a wide range of support activities that can be provided to individuals,
families and agencies. Some of these support activities are of short
duration while others are more intensive, long-term approaches for helping
to build the capacity of families and agencies. A description of services
can be viewed through our drop-down "Services" menu in the
column on the left.
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