California law and regulation requires that regional centers display on their Web sites information about the dollar value of services they purchase for clients. These data (called "purchase of service" or "POS" data) must be reported separately by clients' ethnic/racial group, langauge and diagnosis.
Legislative Analyst’s Office Report on Early Intervention
The Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) released a report titled “Evaluating California’s System for Serving Infants and Toddlers with Special Needs.” The LAO report contains several recommendations to improve outcomes in California’s provision of early intervention services. The report notes that the school system and regional centers both provide early intervention services. The schools provide early intervention services through the Legacy Program, and the Hearing, Visual, and Orthopedic Impairments (HVO) Program. The regional centers provide early intervention services through the Early Start program.
The report states that in order to adequately address timeline compliance issues and funding differences between education and regional center run early intervention programs, California should unify this bifurcated system. The LAO offers the opinion that the regional center system is better equipped to provide early intervention services to all children, and to generate state savings in the process.