By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
LOWER MANHATTAN — When Mackenzie Correa was 16 months old, she knew only two words: "Hi" and "Up."
Mackenzie didn't recognize her own name and didn't respond to her parents when they spoke to her. She had no interest in other children and spent all her time lining up her toys in perfect rows.
Yilsi Pichardo-Correa, Mackenzie's mother, teared up this week as she described the seemingly insurmountable problems her daughter faced a year ago.
But after therapists paid for by the state started working with her, Mackenzie is now bright and engaged, and wanting to play with her mom.
"It's a different kid," Pichardo–Correa said, as Mackenzie led her over to a stack of neon Play-Doh containers. "It's amazing."
Pichardo-Correa, 35, a Queens resident, credits Mackenzie's turnaround to Early Intervention, an intensive state-funded therapy program that serves children under three who have autism and developmental delays.
But now parents, therapists and advocates warn that the program could be in danger of disappearing, based on a series of budget cuts and administrative changes the state has proposed.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo's executive budget slashes therapist reimbursement rates by over 50 percent in New York City, which would effectively put developmental therapists out of work, care providers said.
Therapists have been paid about $87 per half-hour session in New York City since 1993, with just one cost-of-living increase in the past 18 years, advocates said. Last year the state cut therapists' salaries to about $80 per half hour, advocates said.
This year, the state plans another 10 percent decrease, on top of a 33 percent cut based on changes in the way the state calculates reimbursement.
With these cuts and others, advocates predict that a therapist's salary could drop to $30 per half-hour session as of next month, which would force Early Intervention therapists to quit the program and go into private practice.
"It doesn't make sense," said Leah Esther Lax, co-founder of Hand In Hand Development, a therapy center on Grand Street. "It's not rational."
More than half of the children who receive Early Intervention services in New York are able to enroll in mainstream classes when they start school, which means they don't need to attend more expensive state-funded programs, Lax said. For every dollar the state spends on Early Intervention, the government will save about $7 in the long run, Lax said.
"It's not fiscally sound," Lax said of the planned cuts, "let alone the morality of it."
As down-to-the-wire budget negotiations continued in Albany heading into the weekend, parents and advocates planned a major rally at City Hall at noon on Sunday to call on politicians to reverse the cuts.
The state Assembly's version of the budget would restore the Early Intervention Funding, but the Senate version echoes the governor's proposed cuts, sources said.
A spokesman for Cuomo did not return a call for comment Friday. A spokesman for the state's Department of Health said New York has the largest Early Intervention program in the country and needs to make the planned administrative changes to keep the program strong in the future.
Parents, though, worry that the cuts could stop their children from getting the services they need during the key years of their brain development.
One mother, who gave only her initials, M.C., because she feared retribution for speaking out, said she might have to take out a second mortgage on her Manhattan home or dip into her 401K to continue providing services for her 2 1/2-year-old son, who has pervasive developmental disorder.
M.C., 36, said she realized her son needed help when he was 15 months old and did not respond to instructions like, "Come to momma" and "Pick up the ball." Now, after a year of intensive services, her son speaks seven-word sentences and can run and jump, his mother said.
"The Department of Health is trying to unceremoniously wash their hands of these kids," M.C. said. "They're saying, 'Let the kid stay messed up and be someone else's problem.'"
Parents now receive all Early Intervention services for free. The state tries to get reimbursement from those who have insurance, but parents and advocates said most insurance companies refuse to cover treatment for developmental delays.
If the state needs more help funding Early Intervention, officials should force insurance companies to take on more of the burden, parents and advocates said.
As the budget negotiations continued into late March, therapists have been watching nervously, worried about both their own future and how their young patients will fare.
"It's going to destroy these children's lives," said Harper Johnston, a developmental psychologist who specializes in autism. "If they are left untreated, they will develop severe behavior problems."
The children Johnston works with usually start out just running around, shrieking and banging their heads, she said. Her job is to figure out which fundamental skills they are missing, and then she uses those as building blocks to catch them up to their peers.
The birth-to-three window offers unparalleled opportunities to rewire children's brains because they are still developing, she said.
Johnston, who lives in Gramercy and has two children under the age of three, is also concerned about how she will be able to pay her rent after the budget cuts, but she said her bigger worry is for the children she treats.
At Hand In Hand Development on a recent afternoon, therapists worked one-on-one with a group of two and three-year-olds in a small classroom stocked with picture books and other instructional materials disguised as toys.
One therapist sat patiently with a young boy whose attention wandered everywhere except to the red plastic plate she was trying to get him to identify. Another blew bubbles to soothe a boy who had been shouting in consternation over a challenging puzzle.
And, beneath a large window, Mackenzie sat on the floor, contentedly turning pages in a picture book about spiders and owls.
While Mackenzie has made dramatic progress in the past year, she still slips into her own world, sometimes spinning uncontrollably or fixating on a particular object or phrase. She can finally express her own needs, but she doesn't yet engage in back-and-forth conversations.
Watching her daughter, Pichardo-Correa said all she can do is keep bringing her to the sessions and hoping for the best. Pichardo-Correa attended a public hearing on the budget cuts last week, where she broke down while telling Mackenzie's story at the microphone.
"I am begging you to stop these budget cuts," she said then. "Please, please, do not forget the children."
