Missouri First Steps Petition

This petition asks you to reconsider your plan to eliminate Missouris First Steps Program.

The Missouri First Steps Program offers early intervention to children between the ages of birth and three-years-old. This time period is a critical window of opportunity for therapy services as research has shown over and over again that early intervention is the most effective, and least expensive.

This programs efforts are not duplicated under any other agencies or organizations. Private insurance does not cover these needed therapies. Unless parents have the financial resources to pay for the services, children with delays, autism, Down syndrome, spina bifida, blindness or hearing impairment will have to wait until they are three years old to begin receiving help.

Eliminating this program will rob our states youngest population of their chance to achieve their potential, while at the same time delivering to our public schools children requiring more services then the schools will have resources to help.

Please help save the thousands of children and their families who desperately need this program.

Please save the Missouri taxpayers from a short-term budget cut that will create an overwhelming long-term financial drain on our public schools.

Please save the Missouri First Steps Program.