Awesome Drs. & hopes for communication

Evan had an appt with one of our favorite Drs.- the awesome Dr. Hart, he is a physiatrist & also deals with a special needs child or two of his own. ( the rumor is he's got 2 with autism). He used to work at Shriner's and we followed him to Sutter. Anyway, we decided that Evan will see the ENT & get set up to do both Botox in the saliva glands & also in his left hand like we used to do. He talked & made good points as to why he felt Evan was not a good candidate for the tendon transfer hand surgery. I'm kind of bummed but I don't want to do surgery if it won't help him. So we will just do hand splinting for now.
We also talked about my frustrations with school. And Dr. Hart wrote a letter stating that Evan should have an aide that is experienced in behavior therapy & also someone who will be able to help him use his communication device. Dr. Hart totally gets Evan & said that Evan is smart & communication should be his most important goal. I love that he gets Evan & we are on the same page as far as knowing that he will not have a functional speech & a communication device will be his main form of communication.
Speaking of communication devices- Evan currently has an ALT-chat & it really doesn't seem to be very user friendly. I find that it's hard to find things or it takes too many different pages to go through. It's frustrating to me. Evan was using with consistent prompting & encouragement at his last school placement. This school year he's not using it at all because nobody is prompting or encouraging him. Also, the speech therapist isn't using it either. This is something I will bring up in his IEP! I feel that they are doing a huge disservice to Evan in not continuing to push him to use the device.
At home it is harder to remember to get him to use it because he can get his needs across for the most part.
So hubby & I agree that we want to get Evan an iPad ASAP. But in the meantime I will start using his device & other communication options more. I'm excited to see Evan grow in this area. He's made so many strides this year as far as maturity & cognitive age goes.