What happens when a family follows every instruction, documents every crisis, and still cannot get the treatment their child needs?
Vance Goforth joins Devon Wieters to share his family’s experience advocating for his son Joshua, who survived shaken baby syndrome as an infant and later lived with multiple disabilities, seizures, and severe behavioral crises. Vance describes years of seeking appropriate care, a treatment facility’s written denial tied to Joshua’s wheelchair, promised services that never arrived, repeated emergency situations, and the long fight to secure inpatient treatment.
The conversation also explores the effects of prolonged crisis on the whole family, the faith that sustained Vance and his wife Christy, and the advocacy work that grew from their experience through A Voice for Joshua.
Wheel With It was formerly called Real Talk: All Things Inclusion. This episode was originally released under the Real Talk name and is now part of the Wheel With It archive. Some terminology reflects the language used at the time of the original recording.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Joshua survived shaken baby syndrome at 29 days old and experienced 30–50 seizures a day during infancy.
• After a psychiatrist said Joshua needed inpatient treatment as soon as possible, one facility denied admission in writing because it said it was not ADA compliant and Joshua sometimes used a wheelchair.
• Although Joshua was approved for ECF Choices, respite care, and in-home services, Vance says the family waited about a year while providers repeatedly said they could not serve him.
• A short out-of-state hospitalization effectively reset the placement process, forcing the family to seek denials across Tennessee again even though severe crises resumed within days.
• Joshua ultimately received 15 months of treatment at Springbrook in South Carolina, and Vance later created A Voice for Joshua to advocate for families facing similar service gaps.
CONNECT WITH VANCE GOFORTH
A Voice for Joshua on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/changeforjosh
Read Vance’s advocacy writing through the National Council on Severe Autism:
https://www.ncsautism.org/blog/blog/autism-its-time-to-take-the-conversation-back
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