Wednesday 11 February 2015

The IEP Parent Rights Awareness And Its Importance

By Beryl Dalton


Individualized education programs (IEP) are services offered in both public and private schools for children with special needs. Normally, the services are available for kids that have one form of disability or the other or even those kids that have delayed skills. In public schools, these services are normally available free of charge. However, the parents need to be the advocates for their kids to ensure that they access the right services, from the right educators at the right time. In order to achieve this, the IEP parent rights form the basis on which the parents can engage the concerned parties to develop a tailor-made program that guarantees the student's success in school.

Any child with some difficulty in normal learning or functionality should access the individualized education program. However, the child needs to be accessed before the recommendation of what is actually needed is made. Normally, most of them may only need extra attention from the teacher in a normal class. There are many reasons that call for the extra attention. The common ones include the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the speech, vision, or hearing impairment, any developmental delay, cognitive challenges, and emotional disorders.

The teacher can ordinarily handle the student and offer the attention needed in a normal class environment when the condition is not severe. However, the child's condition may be severe and specialized attention required. This call for a referral that may see the student attended to in a specialized resource room in the school or have him/her relocated to a specialized school altogether.

Since the teacher and the parents are the ones closest to the kid, they are the ones to recommend the student for the IEP services. The school counselor or the psychologist first assesses the kid and gather the necessary data by interviewing the concerned student, the parents, and the teacher and also take time to observe the child.

The child is then accessed after the permission of the parent. A professional team is formed and the parents have the chance to permit the types of test to be performed and who is involved in the said process, In most cases, the team consists of the psychologist, the physical therapist, the occupational therapists, the speech therapist, specialist in hearing and vision, and special educator among others.

It is this team, parents and teachers included, that develops an appropriate IEP program. This is a program that is tailor-made to address the child's short-term and long-term goals. It consists of specific and measurable goals that take account of the child's shortcomings.

In order to fully represent your child, you must be well aware of the parental rights at all stages of the process. These rights are contained in a procedural safeguard documents that should be availed to the parents at the moment their child get a referral.

The legal services may be available for free or sometimes at a low cost and the parents should always liaise with the district attorney or other advocates that are experienced with the IEP services. When the parent is well versed with the right, he/she will be in a position to be in charge of the whole process and seek legal redress at any stage when he/she is not in agreement.




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