Golden Gate Regional Center

In my experience, they’ve only recently given me the kind of attention I’ve desperately needed. I’ve been a client of theirs since 2004, and it appears that getting kicked out of the Berkeley program has been the only thing that has gotten the message across to them that I needed more helpful service than I’d ever gotten in the first place. I’m glad that someone (other than my family) is looking out for my well being, but, it took them several years to realize how much I’ve failed in life. I’ve been taken advantage of for most of my life, but they’ve improved by 50% since 2004, so, I’d give them 2 stars for finding me the right advocates after many struggles. I honestly believe that a lot of the 1 star reviews are completely accurate, and that the 5 star reviews are from people who haven’t been clients long enough to know that they’ve failed many people for so many years (2004 – 2013). They appear to have changed since I left San Mateo, and, if they continue to provide me with this better level of care and concern, they’ll get more stars. as for now, I’m leaving this at 2 stars.

GGRC is doing great things for families and children. I don’t think I have anything bad to say about them. Our case managers have always been extremely helpful, understanding, and accommodating.
My family and I moved from SF to Belmont mid-​process. Since we were moving out of the county, we had to transfer our case to the San Mateo County GGRC. Tina Tom at the SF GGRC worked very swiftly in preparing and processing the transfer — it was seamless. Elizabeth Scott at the SMC GGRC was extremely helpful in helping us find the right service for my son. When our speech therapist had to drop us, she gave my son extra group speech therapy (sort of like a speech preschool) which he loved and thrived in. She found us a different speech therapist very quickly and allowed my son to continue the group speech. During our exit, Elizabeth even took the time to attend our IEP meeting with the school district. As we know, IEP meetings are long and boring.

I think Golden Gate Regional Center is good idea in theory (helping people with developmental delays), but there are a lot of kinks they still need to work out. My son has a slight gross motor and expressive language delay, which prompted his pediatrician to make a referral for «early intervention» — the thinking is that the earlier one intervenes, the more likelihood that a child can benefit from early therapy to develop normally later. Well, it took 3 weeks for an intake nurse to call us back after our pediatrician made the referral. When the nurse finally called me, she was a little condescending and judging without having even evaluated my family. She said things like when both parents work and the child is in daycare during the week, the child is probably not getting any teaching or encouragement from daycare. Instead, she suggested that we take him out for more learning opportunities like going to story time at the library DAILY. Well, excuse us for having 2 full-​time working parents…
It turns out that Golden Gate Regional Center only accepts children who are more than 30% delayed under 2 years old and more than 50% delayed over 2 years old (read: very developmentally delayed). The intake nurse told me that my son’s referral was a waste of time because his delay is minor, which was not true; he subsequently got evaluated at GGRC upon my perseverance and found to be more delayed than she assumed. Our social worker is pretty good, but because of high case loads, it still took her months to set up services for us. All staff members seem to use alternate excuses like furlough days, illness, vacation, and family issues to prolong getting their job done. I understand sometimes things like that happen, but all the time? It took about 6 – 9 months from beginning of the referral to actually getting services in place for my son.
A friend of mine took her child to the Golden Gate Regional Center in Mountain View, and said that location is a tad faster and had a little better experience.
1 star off: condescending intake nurse
1 star off: the «early» intervention program really doesn’t happen very early