Help with permanent residency visa including my son with speech delay

[ecam810]

Good Morning!

 

I have a question which has been asked 100 times on here but as ever my case is slightly different from all the rest! I am currently in the very early stages of getting a PR visa via sponsorship. Unfortunately I have just become aware of the issues which can arise from having leaning disabilities and having your visa granted. My son is just under 2.5 years old and has speech delay he was referred to a Speech therapist who decided he should attend a learn and grown group rather than having therapy at this stage. In general he does the majority of what a child should at his age it is really just his speech. So the big question is...are we likely to get our visa? Has anyone else had the same circumstance? as most I see on here are from people who's children have been diagnosed with Autism etc and are a little older. One other thing which I thought of was whether it is possible to agree to pay for any costs my child will incur due to his speech delay once in Australia such as paying for any therapy or extra schooling he may need? Is this even possible? Many thanks for anybody's input I have also emailed George Lombard but there is nothing like peoples personal experiences!

[Petals]

I would wait and see if you have a problem. My son never spoke either and we had him in speech therapy and a friend of my oh said oh, he will be fine and when he talks you will not be able to shut him up. So true and he was nearly 3. He did everything else on time but just felt no need to talk to us. My oh friend had five children and he was right.

 

Hope it does not affect your visa.

[lebourvellec]

At 2.5 years this should not be a problem. Most speech therapists don't work with children under 3, they may do group sessions or work with parents to help bring children on at home.

Edited June 11, 2013 by lebourvellec

[rosiew]

If it is his only issue I do not think it is a "disability" that gets in the way because they are being wary of disabilities that will cost the country lots of money. Most kids end up in private speech therapy anyway so that costs the country nothing. If you get on a waiting list for a community health based service, you will get it cheaper but it is still not going to bankrupt the health budget!

[welshpod]

My youngest is 3 and has been "diagnosed" with global delay. When he was first seen by te peadidtritian he was not walking or talking at about 18 months. he has caught up but is still not talking, we've had interventions from speech and language etc. He's making slow progress with new words all the time but he would not go to mainstream school in Sept if we were staying put.

 

We're currently waitng for his medicals to be OK'd. The dr at Spire asked us to get a report from the consultant to give them all the info they might need and didn't see it as a problem. Although we are still waiting for a decision. Having said that we might be a bit more complicated as they found additional dna in some of the cells they looked at when they were ruling out Fragile X syndrome and we've not been told what that means, if anything, so that might be the hold up.

 

I'll let you know if we get the go ahead

[ecam810]

Thanks so much for all your responses. I may be panicking a little too much possibly... but this has not been the 1st hurdle and I can't sleep properly due to the suspense and not knowing, I am sure Welshpod in particular can relate to this!

 

Alot of other peoples children have had S & L therapy etc but the issue has only been brought up lately with my son so we have no real documentation or assessment or diagnosis just that he is behind with speech and he also was a little slower at walking it was about 16 months when he started to walk. I wish you the best of luck Welshpod, do let me know how you get on

[ozbin]

Hi, I'm in a similar situation as yours. How did you get on with the Visa process.

[pwkl]

I agree, it may not be a 'problem' at 2.5 years, just need to monitor it. My son would only be making noises, no talking at all when he was 2.5. He started attending a pre-school around then and the teachers were fantastic, very experienced and knew exactly how to get him to interact and communicate with the teachers and his peers. His speech improved dramatically and he hasn't stopped talking since, even in his sleep sometimes, lol.

 

I wish you the best.

Edited March 3, 2014 by pwkl

[sifat]

I have applied for 489 visa offshore with my husband and with my 5 year old daughter. We have been told to do medicals. We went to a listed doctor in Bangladesh but unfortunately the doctor was so rude to us. Specially with my daughter, normally my daughter freaks out whenever she sees doctor and the doctor found it abnormal and he then said we need to see another doctor to assess if my daughter has autism. My daughter is quite delay in speech but she does speak but not 2 full sentence. Anyways we said you can submit everything if she requires further assessment later then we will do it once the case officer ask. But he informed BUPA. We received an email from BUPA saying we need to do this assessment or else my daughter does not fulfil the requirement of health. Now my question is how could a doctor decides a child's life without even looking at my daughter properly. We requested the doctor to talk to my daughter outside of his office but he refused and treated us really bad. I have already complained about the doctor in the DIBP website. Now my queries is how could I show that my daughter is not going to be a burden to Australia budget? Im very much worried about this circumstances. My daughter was born in Australia and we did  medical before leaving Australia 1 year back with a HAP ID for different visa where there was no problem with my daughter's medical examination. All the experienced people please suggest what to do in this condition so that it doesn't hamper our application.

[Nemesis]

Are BUPA requesting the extra checks on behalf of DIBP? If so, she will have to do them so that the medical panel at DIBP can assess whether she meets the requirements.

The doctor has not decided the child's life, he has reported what he found, with the result that extra tests are needed. That's the normal process.

If DIBP have asked BUPA to get extra tests done, and they are not done, she won't get the visa.

Edited November 5, 2017 by Nemesis

[Quoll]

Unfortunately you cannot prove that your daughter is not going to cost the Australian tax payer. If she is not really speaking more than 2 sentences at 5 (and then I am assuming not in English either) then she is going to be in need of support in an educational environment and that doesn’t come cheap especially if she has behaviour difficulty like you have described. They take those costs into account when the panel makes the decision.

The usual course is to recommend one of the agents who specialise in medical conditions like George Lombard or Peter Bollard and to have a full psycho educational assessment done to determine whether autism may be a feature and the extent to which her speech/language deficit is affecting her ability to function in a normal regular environment. Unfortunately I have no idea what the assessment protocols are for Bangladesh but if you were from UK then I would suggest a cognitive ability assessment, current level of skills assessment, adaptive behaviour assessment and specifically a speech language assessment as well as an autism assessment.

[Tulip1]

Totally agree with Quoll. The doctor is just doing his job and thoroughly by the sounds of it.  It would be reasonable to expect further referrals if a 5 year old couldn't manage more than 2 sentences and at times 'freakes' out as you put it. I expect you are worrying because you yourself know there may be an issue, totally understandable but it's not the doctors fault. If you believe there's nothing wrong then you have nothing to be concerned about.