Helping Children with Special Needs Together

The Asperger’s Association of New England is accepting registrations for a workshop “Making School Work for Your Child with AS”

Three dates:
December 8, 2009; February 9, 2010; or April 13, 2010.

There is a registration fee ($40 per person for AANE members; $50 per person for non-members) but since AANE is a really helpful resource, I think it’s all right in this case to bend the rule of “no postings for events that require a fee.”

For more information visit:
http://www.aane.org/upcoming_events/Making_School_Work.html

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Disability Law Center, Inc. is offering a free training and clinic for parents on special education transition services for children with disabilities, ages 14-22.

The morning session will include a presentation on transition services and planning for children with disabilities and during the afternoon parents will have an opportunity to get some individual consultation time with attorneys from the Disability Law Center and other legal service agencies.

For more information see:
http://www.dlc-ma.org/_conf2/sped.asp

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One of the group members sent this to share with everyone — the attached file, distributed by Cambridge Public Schools to parents of children in the district, helps them understand the MCAS reports.

How to Read Your Student’s MCAS Report

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“Special Education Advocacy” workshop

December 2, 2009; 12:00 p.m.-1:30 p.m.

Harvard Center for Workplace Development,

124 Mt. Auburn Street, third floor, room 3311, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Sarah Whiting, a second year student at Harvard Law School and a student advocate in the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, a joint effort of the Massachusetts Advocates for Children and Harvard Law School, will lead a discussion on special education advocacy.

Also present will be Susan Cole, Esq., senior project director of the Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative, and Lecturer on Law and Clinical Instructor in the Special Education/Trauma and Learning Policy Initiative Clinic.

The presentation will cover the following:
-Legal definition of a disability
-Establishing a prima facie case to receive special education
-Procedural Protections of the IDEA and a Timeline for When Things Should Happen
-Comparison of the IDEA and 504
-Suggestions for advocating on behalf of your child
-How to find and work with an independent evaluator (this includes financial considerations)

The event is free. Registration open through PeopleSoft.

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One of the parents in the group wanted to share with everyone information about Title I Program for Free Tutoring. This information is about tutoring in Cambridge, MA but other districts might be doing it as well.

As Cambridge Public School’s brochure about Title I, says

“Title I provides additional resources and instruction to improve the educational performance of low achieving children in high poverty schools. Its goal is to help those children meet challenging state academic content and performance standards. A “regular” or targeted assistance Title I school is one in which services are provided to a select group of students targeted as failing or most at risk of failing to meet the state’s academic standards.”

If you live in Cambridge, you can look at information about Title I funded tutoring opportunities offered through Cambridge Public Schools. Deadline for supplemental service requests is November 20, 2009.

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Nancy Costikyan from the Office of Work / Life forwarded a very interesting article to share with the group:

“An Evidence-Based Approach for Supporting Parents Experiencing Chronic Sorrow” by Jessica Gordon, MSN, RN, CPNP-PC, published in 2009 in Pediatric Nursing.  I’m afraid I’d be breaking copyright law if I posted it here but here’s the link to it through Harvard libraries (you’ll have to log in with your Harvard ID to see it):

http://ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=38809808&site=ehost-live&scope=site

As Nacy wrote, the article “makes a subtle distinction between sorrow, grief and depression that is quite important” with chronic sorrow being defined as “an ongoing living loss that is permanent, progressive, recurring, and cycling in nature.”

The author also emphasizes that while “chronic sorrow is a normal grief response” and “is not clinical depression” “if management methods [to deal with chronic sorrow] are ineffective and proper intervention is not offered, [chronic sorrow] may progress to a pathological grief state, such as depression.”

I must say I found it interesting that “internal management methods” suggested include “seeking out social interaction with others who share similar feelings in caring for a child who is chronically ill,” which I hope this networking group can provide.

Because it’s an academic article, it also includes a bibliography of references, among which there is another interesting article:

“Between joy and sorrow: Being a parent of a child with developmental disability,” by Tim Griffin and Penelope M. Kearney, published in 2001 in Journal of Advanced Nursing.

The authors wrote: “Prevailing societal and professional assumptions of parental crisis and maladjustment in response to the `tragedy’ of having a disabled child did not accord with the authors’ practice experience. Whilst parents confronted numerous difficulties, most of them appeared to manage with optimism and remarkable resourcefulness.”

Again, I cannot post it here but here’s the link:

http://ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=4514237&site=ehost-live&scope=site

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Full notes from the October 2009 workshop on identifying learning disabilities will be posted together with the link to the video of the lecture. Please be patient.

In the meantime, click on the links below to download the handouts:

Slides of the PowerPoint presentation “Is your child struggling at school? An introduction to the identification and evaluation of learning disabilities” by Jennifer Thomson, PhD, CCC-SLP, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Taking the First Step: A Guide for Parents of Children with Learning Disabilities, published by Coordinated Campaign for Learning Disabilities, Communication Consortium Media Center

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“Making ‘Cents’ of Healthcare Financing”

November 19, 2009; 12:00 p.m.

Harvard Center for Workplace Development,
124 Mt. Auburn Street, third floor, room 3311, Cambridge, MA 02138.

Beth Dworetzky, Project Director of the Massachusetts Family-to-Family Health Information Center, a project of Mass Family Voices and the Federation for Children with Special Needs will present a workshop on MassHealth Commonhealth — the medicaid buy in for middle income families who have children with disabilities (including autism spectrum or ADHD), and may even have private health insurance, but need more services. The presentation will also include an overview of the Massachusetts Family-to-Family Health Information Center, MassHealth Programs for families with children with special health care needs, eligibility & application, explanation of MA Waivers & Relief Fund, and advocacy strategies for working with private health insurers. This seminar will help you make an informed decision about whether or not buying into the MA Medicaid system for a child with a disability makes good financial sense for the family, and will supplement needed health services for the child.

Open to Harvard affiliates. Please register through PeopleSoft. (registration is already open)

THANK YOU to Beth Dworetzky for agreeing to present this workshop for free. And THANK YOU to the Office of Work / Life for booking the room for the meeting.

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“Is your child struggling at school?
An introduction to the identification and evaluation of learning disabilities within the public schools”

October 28, 2009; 12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Harvard Graduate School of Education, Longfellow Hall 308, 13 Appian Way, Cambridge, MA 02138.

At the invitation of Harvard’s Office of Work / Life Resources and the Helping Children with Special Needs Together networking group Professor Jennifer Marie Thomson from the Harvard Graduate School of Education will talk about the identification process for children with potential learning disabilities, offer some tips on navigating evaluation reports, and explain changes in the identification process occurring through the new federal Response-to-Intervention (RTI) framework.

Open to Harvard affiliates. To register, email: worklife@harvard.edu.

THANK YOU to Prof. Thomson for agreeing to present this workshop for free, for arranging the meeting room, AND for arranging videotaping of her talk, thanks to which the Office of Work / Life will have a DVD with the presentation available to lend to those parents who could not come.

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“Social” meeting (lunch) on October 15, 2009, at 1:30 p.m. at Dudley Cafe (in Lehman Hall in Harvard Yard). If you’d like to come and haven’t been to any workshops yet and don’t know anyone in the group yet, let me know.

Jolanta

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