I'm having some trouble partly in my mind and partly not with the services that support my oldest daughter. She wants to go to the state's Annual People First Meeting. It is in another parish and the provider has given me a list of explanations about why it is a problem.

The first explanation was that they had to get special permission for her staff to be able to take her. The more I thought about it the more I thought that I had never heard of that before. So I called the waiver unit and asked them.

They told me that there was no 'special permission' that they knew of. They did mention that it could be an agency policy or procedure. I'm thinking ok but... So my next question was "Isn't the provider supposed to support her to do the things she wants to do?"

The answer I got that time was to put it into the CPOC. That was an aha! moment for me. I knew how that worked from 16 years with this child alone of IEPs. I called the case manager and left a message within the next couple of hours about that.

Anyway when I called the provider again. I was having trouble getting anyone on the phone. As a matter of fact that has been a problem all week. I did get the regional manager and she told me she was waiting to hear back from risk management. She needed to know how to word the paperwork.

I heard back from the DSP supervisor later in the day. She is having trouble getting staff situated. She requested 2 weeks notice to get the staff lined up. I will bring Dominoe myself if it comes down to it but I'm still not happy.

All of this to explain, I guess I'm going to have to fuss. I hate fussing. I feel I'm pretty flexible. When they told me I had to pay $20.00 every pay period to get a copy of the staff notes.

I thought that was pretty expensive. But ok, I'm willing to pay $520.oo for the notes this year. But there is a limit to what the provider should be trying to tell me... This is the limit. But I hate fussing.