Wednesday morning. It’s Valentine’s day but it’s also a sad day for us. Ms. Nhu called me around 10:00 AM and delivered the bad news that Kevin (the supervisor) already left the company this week, Annie (who was William’s Behavorial Technician from the beginning and now that she’s promoted to supervisor, she has been parent training Tim for about 2 months) is also leaving the company end of this month. It’s getting worse when I was told Ms. Selestie who has been William’s BT for every night at home for the past 3 months also thinking about leaving too. Which means the team that we love so much is about to leave us soon; and the worse news is that ABEST doesn’t have any available staffs to teach William at home. One thing I’m glad is that Ms. Han and Tracy will still be with William at the day care from 2:00 – 5:00 pm.
Ms. Nhu also said that it’s ok if I want to look for another vendor; and I should look soon before July. Because after July, RCOC will transfer all the cases to CalOptima, then it’s gonna be harder to find a vendor.
I cried when I heard the news while still on the phone with her. I just love every one in this team so much, they’re all good teachers to William; and my boy has learned so much from them. It’s heart breaking to see such a good team falling apart.
I also felt bad for Ms. Nhu, she’s a very dedicated and passionate about this work. It’s a small company so she handles everything from recruiting to billing and doing paperwork. It must be tough for her that 3 staffs are leaving at the same time. Because of her I decided to stay and wait until she can find a new BT for William.
Thursday 2/15/2018. Evening session with BT Selestie at home as usual.
Ms. Selestie told me to keep this as a secret that Ms. Nhu also is leaving the company in 2 months! I was so shock; I just simply thought it’s the staffs that are leaving; never thought the company is not doing well. Not sure what the reason is but Ms. Nhu is 1 of the most important person in the company; and if she leaves, there’s no one else can run the company. Once again I felt sad for Ms. Nhu; she invested lots of her time and energy into this company; she must feel really bad. I always admire her passion about helping children with autism; that’s why she opened this company with hoping that she can do better than other companies. I wish I could do something to help her and bring the company back.
William of today is totally different than William of 8 months ago. Thanks to all wonderful BTs from ABEST that William has progressed so much at the rate that everyone is amazed; especially Ms. Han and Annie who have been there with William from the beginning. 8 months sounds like a long time but to us it’s not that long. I really missed those days when there were times 3 or even 4 staffs came to our house at once. I still remembered we talked and laughed.
I’d like to list the name of all ABEST staffs here so that I won’t forget:
Ms. Nhu, Ms. Nhi, Ms. Jody, Ms. Annie, Ms. Han, Ms. Selestie, Ms. Tracy (she just started with William for 2 weeks), Mr. Kevin (supervisor).
It’s so hard to say goodbye!
Saturday, a nice winter noon that felt like summer. Lunar New Year is less than 2 weeks so the malls around us starting to celebrate; Main Place mall the is the one that celebrated earlier compares to other malls. The stage with dance/singer performance took place near in front of Macy’s. We came when a group of Taiwanese dancers were performing; very beautiful and colorful costumes. William seemed to enjoy watching the dance.
Vietnamese Lunar New year is coming soon; it’s like a tradition that we go shop for flowers before the big day; and the most popular place to go to is the Asian Garden Mall in Westminster (Phuoc Loc Tho).
Lake Forest City organized a Snow Fest day for everyone where they had 2 snow play areas (free) and 1 snow slide area (purchase ticket in advance for $7.00/person) with a small stage where they play music. Last time I took William to the Winter Fest at the Discovery Cube and he totally loved it so we decided to take him to this event.
Friday morning; there’s no school at Mitchell so William will be spending his day at Children’s World Preschool. I dropped him off as usual; and stood by my car to observe him a little bit before leaving the day care. He walked around, passed the sand box and came to the group of other children who were playing with the race tracks. I’m glad to see that because other times he’d just sit alone some where and did not interact with other children. The fact that he came by to watch others play is a good sign that he’s starting to blend in.