ljoy, There really *is* so much you can do for this - your dd is going to be fine, and she can learn how to write too! OK, I shouldn't be promising you any of that because I'm just a mom, but fwiw my ds has made *huge* progress and has finally in this past year really *really* for the first time I am starting to believe he's going to be able to write on his own and high school will be ok. Three years ago he couldn't spontaneously write enough words on his own to even have the TOWL graded (that means he was looking at a picture and couldn't come up with *20* words - really I think he didn't come up with any)... and now in 7th grade he is actually starting and making good progress on many of his writing assignments *in class*. He's still seeing a private SLP and we still provide a lot of support as needed at home, but it's gradually becoming less and less and over time you can really see tremendous strides. Sooo.. HANG IN THERE!!!!
I'm sorry I don't have time to write much right now (it's late and I am about to fall asleep lol!)... but fwiw, the way we got our neuropscyh covered by insurance was to be referred by our pediatrician, and it was charged to a medical code. The neuropsych's office administrator actually helped with the insurance coding to make sure it would be covered. I'm not in your area, so I don't have any referral advice, but we found our neuropsych through our pediatrician.
Aside from the neuropsych, it sounds like your dd could really benefit from accommodations (not just remediation/tutoring). Is she using any AT when she's writing at school? No matter what her testing ultimately shows, there are tons of things you could try right now with AT - if you have time to list what she has and hasn't tried, we can give you some additional suggestions.
And re high schools holding her back in lowest level of classes due to his challenges with writing - when my ds was 10 I would have predicted that easily happening to him. His private school accelerated him in math without worrying over math facts, and it was hugely successful. They've always expected him to do grade level work in LA and even though he was so writing-challenged for so long, it was absolutely the right thing to do - now that he's getting the hang of writing, he actually does much better when challenged with an intellectually-appropriate writing assignment than he does with something that's just not matching where his brain waves are at.
Re which evaluations to ask for - with my kids, I've found it most useful to describe the challenges you've observed and your concerns and then listen to what the evaluator says he/she would like to do. A typical neuropscyh eval will cover a wide swath of testing. Sometimes you'll be referred on for other more specific testing (such as OT or SLP) but in general, I find that it's been most useful to start with the broad look from the neuropsych first, because my gut instincts have absolutely been off re what the actual challenges were.
Best wishes,
polarbear
