Justice for one and all

(photo courtesy of Jack E. Clay)

My friend Jenna & I started the Ga. Therapy Moms support group about 4 years ago and we've had a very good experience. We currently have about 80 parents on our email list. We've moved from monthly meetings to quarterly meetings to meeting at Monkey Joe's for Sensory Night. We are more so an email group and share info, etc. We have a great group of parents and we've seen more opportunities come to Douglas County for our kids...Adaptive Baseball, Special Pops Tennis & Sensory Night at Monkey Joe's. Parents have become more involved in our community and I think we are making a difference in the lives of families who have children with special needs.

It came to our attention about a year ago that some of our kids were being asked to leave Boundary Waters, the only indoor pool in the county that was paid for by taxes and the SPLOST fund. For a year, Jenna has been arguing with the director of Boundary Waters about the issues that parents have been dealing with and nothing has become of it...no resolution whatsoever. Now we are not asking to be coddled and given everything we want because we have special needs kids, we just want the law to be followed and some understanding on the part of the workers at the pool.

When we didn't get any resolution with the director, we went to the Chairman of the Douglas County Commissioner's office. Jenna scheduled a meeting and we met with him today. What we didn't know was that the director of the parks & rec dept. Mr. D. & his boss, Mr. L. we going to be in attendance.

We shared our concerns, had emails to prove children had been asked to leave, and really never came to much of a resolution. We feel like what we had to say didn't matter and they are going to bandaid the situation. We were just some silly moms who have nothing better to do with their time than cause problems. We did come up with some things to put in place and we are going to keep a very careful eye on the situation.

I just don't think they know who they are messing with.

I often wonder why we have to fight so hard for every little thing. We fight our insurance companies to pay for therapies & other important medical needs. We fight our school system for a fair education. We fight with people in the parking lot who are parked in a handicapped space who don't have the license or tag. We fight SSI who claims they overpaid us when the mistake was their fault (I won that one). We fight to get Medicaid so that we are not drowning in medical debt. We fight with the neighbor kid who likes to taunt and tease.

I hope to look back and say, I fought a good fight.