HAMLIN, N.Y. – As budget negotiations in Albany continue, advocates are hoping to see an increase in pay for occupational, speech and physical therapists who work with young children. They say, there are not enough early intervention specialists and it’s becoming a crisis.

There are hundreds of families in Monroe County alone who have children in need of early intervention therapies but they remain on wait-lists, sometimes for months, while trying to access care.  

Kailey Yeager of Hamlin is her son’s biggest advocate.

“Matthew is loving, he’s happy, he’s intellectual, he’s a great kid,” she tells News10NBC. 

But she realized early on, he needs a little extra help.

“We thought we should probably just get an assessment to be on the safe side so, once we did that, it showed the need for speech therapy and occupational therapy,” Yeager says.

Those early interventions are supposed to be available for infants and toddlers up to age 3 through the county where you live. The cost is covered by a combination of state and local tax dollars and a tax on insurance companies.

“Under federal law, you have 30 days after that plan is created to start services and that’s where NYS is 50th in the nation, last in the nation for delivering those services on time,” says Brigit Hurley, chief program officer at The Children’s Agenda.

About half of children who are eligible do not get services on time and that’s been true for many years.

“There, to date, has not been any consequence for the state,” Hurley says.

It’s turning into a crisis for impacted families. The Yeager’s had to wait 10 months, other kids have aged out of eligibility without ever getting the services. “I was a little panicked, I was googling a lot, what can I do to help somebody that needs occupational therapy and how to advocate because I didn’t know who to talk to,” Yeager says. 

Families and advocates want the state to fund a study to assess what can help fix a clearly broken system. They also want at least a 5% pay increase for the therapists who continue to chip away at those waiting lists.

“Everyone seems to say they don’t have enough money to pay for this service and it is so clear that it would save all of those levels of government and systems money in the long run, it’s a little bit of a short sided situation where people don’t want to put out the money now,” Hurley says.

Late last year, Governor Kathy Hochul vetoed legislation that would have directed the state health commissioner to review the Early Intervention Program. The Governor cited the cost of the study as the reason for her veto.

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