Save a good system for infants and toddlers

U.S. Census Bureau estimates are that between 2 and 3 percent of infants and toddlers have an identified disability or developmental delay. The early years of education for these children are guided by Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The result has been a smartly coordinated effort among states to provide therapeutic and educational services for infants and toddlers.

King County, while meaning well, throws a cog into this finely tuned wheel by pushing for an interpretation of the federal law that is stricter than the state's. If the county's effort prevails, a delicate system of nonprofit organizations that work with young disabled children will be eviscerated. This is not hyperbole. Parents of children with disabilities living in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Texas have seen educational options evaporate under overly strict interpretations of the federal law.

Now comes King County's Developmental Disabilities Division with a requirement that service providers overhaul their operations within months, with the end result being a change in the populations they serve.

Take the Boyer Children's Clinic in Seattle, for example. The clinic's director, Judith Moore, says the Montlake facility currently serves about 200 children at any one time, providing physical, vision, speech and other therapeutic services at the clinic and in homes.

County officials are not satisfied with Boyer's 64 years of service. They are demanding the nonprofit agency start providing almost all therapies in the child's home or in a classroom setting that includes at least 50 percent normally developing children.

We understand the goal of mainstreaming special-education children with their developing peers. But to comply with this onerous rule slammed on the head of every service provider, Boyer would have to displace half of its special-needs children to make room for the non-disabled children.

No one gains from taking a cookie cutter to what should be an individual therapeutic approach. Presumably, normally developing children can be served almost anywhere. But children ages newborn to 3 have few options.

Some local hospitals have stopped offering these services because the regulations were becoming too onerous. In this region, there are under a dozen providers including Boyer, the Kindering Center in Bellevue and the Children's Therapy Center in Kent.

County Executive Ron Sims has called for a meeting of all involved parties this Thursday. At the meeting, bureaucratic overzealousness should move over to make room for a compromise that keeps service providers rather than pushes them away.