How to Get Help for Your Special Needs Child

Often parents who have special needs children are left on their own to figure how best to help educate and care for their child. It’s up to you to find the right program or specialist, and then you have to figure how to pay for it all, especially if what you need isn't covered by insurance. But the state of Florida has resources that can help. They offer different kinds of scholarships that can help pay for special services or products. One of these scholarships is called the Gardiner Scholarship, and you can read below to find out more about this program and how it can help your child.

The Gardiner Scholarship

The Gardiner Scholarship is a program that is run by the Florida Department of Education, which is meant to help parents who have special needs children. Unlike other scholarships, the Gardiner Scholarship doesn’t have to be used exclusively for private school tuition. It can be used to help parents pay for special programs, products, or tuition. The other difference is that the parent doesn’t directly get the scholarship money. Instead, any money will go directly to the chosen provider or product. That means that a parent much choose a service or product that accepts Gardiner funds.

Does My Child Qualify?

For your child to qualify for the Gardiner Scholarship, they must have an accepted medical diagnosis. Some of the disabilities that qualify are autism, Down syndrome, Phelan-McDermid syndrome, Williams syndrome, deafness, traumatic brain injured and others. You can visit the Department of Education’s website to see a full list of disabilities that the Gardiner Scholarship can help with. If you do not have a diagnosis, you can use a IEP as evidence of your child’s disability.

What Can the Gardiner Scholarship Help With?

The great thing about the Gardiner Scholarship is that it offers $10,000. You can use the money to help pay for private school tuition, speech therapists, occupational therapy, instructional materials, or can contribute to prepaid college accounts. The Gardiner scholarships Tampa is a great option for parents to get their special needs child the help they need.
             

4 Solutions to Work on Your Health

Many people often have the best intentions with their health. However, everyday life can often stand in the way of a person’s goals, as it can be easy to skip the gym or ditch a boring diet. If you are serious about improving your mind and body in 2019 and onwards, there are numerous ways you can spruce up your health.

If you want to both feel and look good every day, here are four savvy solutions to improve your health.

Make Time for Meditation Every Day

Believe it or not, meditation is not just for hippies. If you want to develop a clear mind and a positive outlook on life, you should make time to meditate for at least five minutes each day. It doesn’t just lift your mood, either, as it can lower your stress levels, improve your sleeping pattern, and increase your immune system.

Prep Healthy Lunches for Work

It can be tempting to make poor lunch choices when you are stressed out at work or have a short lunch break. Rather than opting for fast food or unhealthy snacks, you should prep various healthy lunches in advance, which will care for your body and provide the fuel it needs to make it through the day. For instance, you could cook chicken breasts with brown rice, chopped vegetables, and hard-boiled eggs the night before, which will provide you with a delicious, nutritious lunch.

Other healthy lunch ideas include:

• Tuna lettuce wraps
• Pesto pasta
• Carrot and coriander soup
• Tuna Niçoise wrap
• Sushi rolls
• Chili salad bowls

Add Epsom Salts into a Hot Bath

It is not only meditation that can care for both your mental and physical health, as adding Epsom salts into a hot bath could help you to enjoy a spot of relaxation after a tiring, stressful day. The salt can help to wash away your worries as it contains magnesium, which can soothe tired muscles and can reportedly help with anxiety and insomnia.

Prioritize Your Mental Health

Many people forget that your mental health is as, if not more, important, as your physical health. When you live life at 100 miles an hour, taking time to yourself to unwind and forget the stresses of the day can easily be forgotten about. However, you should try to make this a priority. Have time to yourself to relax and reboot, otherwise you’ll burn out, which won’t do anyone any favors. You can find fun ways to relax and unwind, such as playing your favorite computer games, catching up with an old friend, or taking it easy with the latest vape products. You can find all you need at ultimatejuice.co.uk. However you like to relax, factor this into your day, and you’ll thank yourself as you’ll always be ready and raring to go when you need to be.

Conclusion

Embracing a healthy lifestyle is about making small tweaks to your diet, eradicating bad habits, and setting some time aside for yourself. Each time you pick up a product, ask yourself if there is a healthier alternative and opt for that instead. Sooner or later, you will notice a big difference to your energy levels, body shape, mood and general health.

How to Cope with Communication Problems After a Brain Injury

Brain injuries can affect people in various ways, but the problems damage to the brain can cause for communication are often the most obvious and can be some of the most challenging to deal with for brain injury survivors and their loved ones.

How a brain injury can affect communication

Because the brain directly controls so many of our key functions, a brain injury can affect us in various ways, including causing physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioural impairment. All of these can lead to difficulties with communication in different ways.

The effects of physical impairment on communication can include difficulty controlling the mouth, tongue and other parts of the body involved in producing speech, leading to slurred or otherwise hard to understand speech, as well as issues with non-verbal communication, such as facial expressions and gestures.

The effects of cognitive impairment on communication can include problems with understanding what is being said, retaining things that have been said, selecting the right words and putting words and thoughts into a logical order.

The effects of emotional impairment on communication can include difficulty understanding other people’s feelings and expressing your own emotions, leading to issues such as an apparent lack of empathy.

Rehabilitation for communication issues following brain injury

Anyone dealing with communication issues following a brain injury will likely benefit from working with a trained Speech and Language Therapist (SLTs). They will work with a brain injury survivor to address their communication difficulties through various exercises and strategies.

An SLT will generally work on improving symptoms, such as difficulty controlling the mouth and tongue, as well as finding ways for the brain injury survivor to work around their communication issues where required.

With the right support from a Speech and Language Therapist, many people living with a brain injury see significant improvement in their ability to communicate effectively, while some may be able to make a full recovery.

Speech and language therapy is usually offered in hospital and rehabilitation units, as well as by community brain injury groups and private practices.

Get the support you need following a brain injury

Living with the various effects of a brain injury can be challenging, so it’s important to have the best possible support so you can live as fully and independently as possible. Much of this support will often need to be paid for privately, meaning there can be significant costs involved for those living with a brain injury and their loved ones.

If you or a loved one have suffered brain damage due to a head injury that was not your fault, you may be able to claim compensation. This can help to cover the costs arising from the injury, ensuring you can access the right support for you or your loved one.

Head injury claims can be complicated, however, so it is strongly recommended to work with solicitors specialising in these types of claims to ensure you get the very best possible legal advice and guidance.

Addicting and Fun: Play Swag IQ and Earn Real Money

Have you played SwagIQ? It’s a live trivia game show where you test your knowledge to win cash prizes. It’s free to play, just download the app to get started. To earn money, you must be a member of SwagBucks. It’s also free to sign up, and there are plenty of ways to get free gifts cards by using the site! Just click on my Swagbucks referral link to get started!

Here’s a little more about Swag IQ:

Monday through Thursday they broadcast a live game. Simply tune-in at the appointed time by launching the SwagIQ app and log-in with your Swagbucks account credentials. The game show host will ask a series of multiple-choice trivia questions. You’ll have 10 seconds to answer each one.

Get it right; you get SB (points you can use to get gift cards) and move on. Answer them all correctly and you can win a grand prize! If more than one player wins, the winners split the grand prize.

Get it wrong; still play along. Some questions have an SB award attached to them. If you answer those questions correctly, you get SB, even if you’re out of the running for the big money. And, if you’re in a groove but miss a question, you’ll have the option to rejoin a game by redeeming a few SB.

Have fun!

Home: Stress Less When Things Go Wrong

So picture this… or maybe you don’t have to. You’re relaxing in your home and suddenly all of the
lights go out. What do you do? Panic. Or picture this. You’re enjoying your nice warm shower,
singing away, and suddenly it runs ice cold. What do you do? Probably scream louder than you
ever have done before and dart out of the way, then proceed to panic. We always seem to stress
when things go wrong in our homes, but the things we’re stressing most about are often the
things that are the easiest to fix. Yes, we get that when something does go wrong, it’s easy to feel
like everything else in your house is going to come down with it. Or what’s worse, it’s easy enough
to think that it’s going to cost you an arm and a leg to fix, when in fact it might even be something
simple that you can fix. Which is why we’re going to encourage you to take some time to relax, and
have a read of the tips we’ve got below for you for coping with stress in your home.

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A Simple Solution To Everything

There really is a solution to everything that goes wrong with your home. Yes, some might be a little
more expensive than others, but there is usually a simple solution to all of your problems. Some
need more promptly fixing than others, because the happiness of your day to day life literally
revolves around it. For example, if you have an air con unit that does both hot and cold, and you
live for the cool breeze that it gives you in the summer, and the warm air it gives you in the winter,
then last thing you want to be doing is leaving it to rot when it breaks! The best ac service will
have it fixed in no time, but if you want to keep things simple, you have to leave it up to the
professionals. It’s easy to think that because it’s your home, that you’re going to be able to fix
everything that goes wrong with it. Well, this is not always the case!

Keeping Your Home In Tip Top Shape

Sometimes just simply maintaining your home is going to stop the stress of something going
wrong. The stress of something going wrong could be because you just haven’t looked after your
home properly. A common example of this can be in the bathroom. If you don’t properly ventilate
the room, and let all of that moisture just soak into the wall, it’s only a matter of time before you
have to deal with mould! Simple solutions really could save you a lot of trouble!!

Making The Most Of Your Home

Finally, we think it’s really important that you stress less about your home. If you’re always
spending so much time worrying about issues, or worrying about issues that might be to come,
how are you ever going to get to the point where you’re actually enjoying your home!