Getting the Neuropsych Exam

On December 29th Mary had her neuropsychological evaluation. Her social worker picked her up in Grand Rapids and drove her to Sauk Rapids to get evaluated by Dr. Tim Tinius. I had been reading about neuropsychological evaluations and had talked to a number of psychologists from the Mankato area about how these were conducted. Most of them told me these tests can take anywhere from three to four hours, are comprised of a number of individual tests, and are often spread out over a few days. Usually the parents meet separately with the psychologist to provide a history of their child in order to rule out things like birth defects and the like. None of the psychologists I talked with said they could perform a neuropsych examination in one hour, and certainly none of them mentioned anything about parental assessments being any part of a child's neuropsychological evaluation. Yet, Mary's exam lasted about an hour, the parents were never consulted (at least not me), and most of the test results were devoted to a parental assessment.

There is Something about Mary

Despite our efforts to convince Mary's workers to get her the neuropsych evaluation Forest Ridge had recommended, Mary's lawyer and I were running into a brick wall. Her corrections officer and social worker simply refused to do this for her even though we felt she needed this more than anything at this point in her journey to nowhere. In order to get this done for Mary, her lawyer had to hold another court hearing and convince the judge to order her workers to schedule a neuropsych appointment for her. The discussion amongst the team then turned to trying to decide where Mary should, not only get her evaluation, but where she should wait until she could get her evaluation.

Doctor Joel Oberstar

A social worker at the State Hospital where I worked had been to the Minnesota State Social Workers conference and was telling me about the keynote speaker — Dr. Joel Oberstar. He said this guy has done amazing things with children at The University of Minnesota, and he told me I should consider contacting him to see if he could help Mary.

North Homes 35-Day Assessment

After spending four days at the New Ulm Detention Center, Mary's corrections officer next placed her in a group home in Northern Minnesota — North Homes, in Grand Rapids, close to the Canadian border. The County seemed to like North Homes. They also seemed to like places that were far away. North Homes seemed like a pretty good place for Mary even though it was roughly five hours from her home. Mary liked the staff at this place and they liked her. She was at North Homes for about two months for her 35-day assessment.

Woodland Hills Four-Day Debacle

Mary kept moving from one group home to the next, and after a year into her placement, with 13 moves already, she still hadn't had an assessment — at least one we could use to help place her. During one of her 60-day-review court hearings, her lawyer brought this up and told the judge Mary needed to be evaluated thoroughly so we could start making more informed decisions about her placements rather than random ones like it seemed we were doing. She pointed out how this could most likely prevent her from being moved so often.