Cancellations:

Please email all requests to cancel sessions to cancel@familyguidanceandtherapy.com.  Include in the email: date, time and therapist name. We will notify your therapist and supervisor of the cancellations.  

When sessions are cancelled with less than 24 hours notice of the scheduled appointment this is considered a late cancel, therefore, a $50.00 late cancel fee will be charged to the credit card on file. Should your therapist arrive at your home for a scheduled appointment and session does not occur, you will be assessed a $100.00 fee. The credit card on file will be charged.

Please note that these fees cannot be billed to San Diego Regional Center, Medi-cal or any other funding source. This is an administrative fee for cancellation.  

When you feel that there has been an unforeseeable and rare circumstance in your family and this has resulted in a last minute cancellation, please contact Jenny to explain reasons for a late cancellation. Cancellation fees may be waived in certain circumstances. 

Examples of rare and unforeseeable may include things such as an extreme medical emergency, or a death in the family. Examples of times when this fee will not be waived is doctor’s appointments running late, decision to see another provider for an important appointment, routine illness. 

Your Child's Late Arrival: 

Being tardy happens for a variety of reasons. We understand that people are late from time to time. Our therapist have no issue waiting for your family to arrive for up to 15 minutes.  Unfortunately, when you are late, we cannot bill that part of your session to your insurance company or any other funding source. If we are unable to reach you, and your child's therapist has waited 15 minutes from start of session time, it will be considered a late cancellation and the $100.00 'no show' fee will be assessed. If you are running more than 15  minutes late, and would still like the remainder of your session to occur, we are happy to wait for you. Please text or call your direct therapist so that she/he doesn’t leave. On these occasions you will be billed at a rate of $10.00 for every .25 increment after the first 15 minutes. Please remember that this will be billed to you separately, as we cannot bill your insurance company for this time. 

Schedule Changes: 

When you need to change the start or end time of an appointment that is occurring on the same day, please email cancel@familyguidanceandtherapy.com and indicate the change needed along with the name of the therapist scheduled. We will notify your treating therapist and supervisor of your requested change and attempt to accommodate you. Due to our staff's busy schedule, it may not be possible to accommodate all requests. Can the change be accommodated, someone from our office will contact you in a timely manner. Generally, a  slight delay to the start time or reducing the duration of a session are easier requests to accommodate. Larger changes, such as moving a scheduled morning appointment to the evening is more difficult to accommodate. On such occasions when we are unable to accommodate changes to any appointment within 24 hours of regularly scheduled appointment, you will be assessed the cancellation fee described in the policy above.

Parent Meetings: 

Mandatory:  parent meeting without child at least 1 time a month  Recommended:  parent meeting without child every other week 

*For those unable to make an in-clinic parent meeting, a tele-medicine appointment may be arranged. Tele-medicine may be approved by your insurance company and will be checked before scheduling.

Scheduling Your Parent Meetings: 

Your RDI consultant will make sure that you are on his/her calendar by sending you an email within the week with some available appointments. If you already have your next appointment schedule, you will keep that. During the last five minutes of your appointment,  you and your consultant will schedule the next parent meeting. For many parents, having a  consistent appointment time helps. You may set a standing appointment with your consultant. Others have lives that require a bit more flexibility. In this case, you will use the last 5 minutes of every appointment to schedule your parent appointment. At the end of the month, if it appears that you have not met your RDI parent consultation minimum requirement which is 1 parent consultation session, we will inform you via email that your child's direct care therapy program is on hold until a parent consultation can occur. Please note, that in the event that your child's program is put on hold for more than two days, your direct care service providers may be moved to another family who is waiting for services. As clinicians, we have an obligation to meet the minimum requirements set by all insurance carriers. We also know that regular meetings will make us a better team for your child.

Parent-Child Video Recorded Engagements:  

It is required that parents demonstrate, through video, that they working to support their child's growth. Videos are also used to review progress on parent-child goals. The minimum requirement is 2 videotaped parent-child interactions in every 6-month contract. It is recommended that you record and submit videos of your RDI guiding engagements more frequently. For the most benefit, please record two times a month. Requested video length continues to be 2-10 minutes.  

I understand that if I am unable or unwilling to participate in the minimum requirement for parent-child video recording that my child's insurance company will be notified and discharge will be considered.  

RDI Program Reading and Review:  

It is required that you read and review your child’s progress notes written every 6 months. It is recommended that you use the RDI-learning system to learn about your child, the model,  and track your own progress, and participate in the hundreds of self-paced learning opportunities. 

Additional RDI Supports Available:  

We want you to get the most out of your child's treatment. Thus, we have a few additional options that parents can request to help you get the most out of your child’s program. 

The following supports are available to all parents: First, parents may request 1 quarterly team meeting in your home. All members of the treatment team will be invited to attend the meeting. Second, parents may participate in any direct therapy session at any time. Third,  parents may review any and all of our treatment videos collected of your child, which are securely stored on the google folder created for your child. Fourth, case supervisors would be happy to be present at your IEP or school meetings to collaborate between all those working with your child. Last, FGTC also offer a once quarterly school observation/consultation by supervisor or observation/consultation with an outside provider appointment such as OT or Speech. If there is an additional way that we can better support you, please bring this up in your next parent meeting and we would be happy to consider it.  

Communication with your supervisor: 

We value our relationship with you. We want to keep the lines of communication open. We hope that you will feel comfortable enough to talk to us about your full experience with our treatment team. We hope you feel safe enough to share about difficult topics like your favorite therapist arriving late, your difficulty with play-dough on the rug or some other things that is bothering you that need adjustment. 

Therapist Data collection:  

As we continue to offer care through medical insurance, the requirements for data collection and clinical notes continues to increase. Your child’s program has between 10 to 20 goals depending on the number of hours of in-home support you receive. As you can imagine, this is a lot of data to collect. Our team needs the appropriate amount of time to collect this data. Data collection is not optional. It is a mandated component of all insurance companies. Many of us wish that we could take less data, but that is not the nature of our work. Your services are billed using the same structure as all mental health medical model appointments; which is a 50 minutes session, with the last 10-minutes of every hour devoted to record keeping. 

Time for data collection: 

This means that if you child has a 3-hour session, up to 30 minutes could be allocated to data collection. Depending on the number of goals, data collection for each session will be taken during treatment AND at the end of each session. Our therapist will communicate with the primary caregiver about when she/he needs to start collecting data. During those times when the therapist is recording data, they will be unable to watch or support your child. The same ratio of data collection is necessary for all sessions, even if your child has more then one session scheduled per day. 

Video Recording and Review: 

Our FGTC treatment team wholeheartedly believes that video recording will allow us to improve our clinical skill set, document your child’s growth, and share innovative ways to engage and support your child. Direct therapists are required to film 1 time per month with each of their families. Therapists will need to spend some additional time in your home to upload videos to your family's google drive. Videos will be uploaded to YouTube as unlisted and be accessible to parents at any time. Video recordings will only be used in clinical supervision and training for our treatment team. We will not use these videos for any other purpose without your expressed knowledge.  

Therapist late arrivals:  

It is always our intention to arrive on time, ready to have a great interaction with your child.  On occasion, we may also be running late. In this event, your therapist will call or text you and let you know their estimated delay. If you haven’t heard from your therapist and it is more than 15 minutes after your session start time, please text both your RDI program supervisor and scheduled therapist. Whenever possible, we will attempt to make up the missed time by either extending the same session by the time missed or by adding the time to a future session. Please contact the RDI program supervisor directly if you notice a  pattern of lateness that is affecting your family’s schedule. 

If you have any questions about the above policies, please contact our office at 619-600-0683 or request to meet with your child’s supervisor.