Apraxia is, put simply, the inability of a person to form words correctly. The words don't come out in an intelligible manner. The wiring in the brain gets mixed up and what the person means to say and what they actually do say aren't the same, the wiring gets crossed somehow. It's a lot like CAPD but in the reverse order. There may be lots of noise but little to nothing of any substance coming from your child's mouth. I have two children with apraxia - our son has mostly overcome his apraxia, but we got him a diagnosis and treatment early. Instead of Pizza, he would say "PASTIS". To him it was the right word and he was very frustrated that we didn't understand him. There were many others, but that one has always stood out, I guess because his favorite food is pizza! Our daughter is 12, and she is finally getting appropriate treatment, and we are seeing progress, just three weeks into the right therapy.
I just learned of a group called CASANA (Childhood Apraxia of Speech Association of North America). They have a blog here on Blogspot, Apraxia - KIDS - Every Child Deserves a Voice. They a lot of information about apraxia and research and treatment. They also have a Facebook page with the same name. If your child has apraxia I highly recommend looking at these spots to get more information and to be ready to ask for what your child needs with some research notes to back up your request.
Showing posts with label SLP Speech therapy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SLP Speech therapy. Show all posts
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
EXAMPLE: Letter Re: Prior Written Notice
This isn't like the sample letters I have written, it is more an idea of how to go with this sort of letter. Since a response to a letter of Prior Written Notice could be about so many different services or assessments, etc. it becomes apparent why I have chosen to use our letter as an example rather than offering a sample. I believe that if one goes with a generic sort of letter in this case, one will get a generic sort of response which is not at all meaningful or helpful. Just a warning - my sarcastic sense of humor comes through in this particular post, but not in the meat and potatoes of the letter. Our director of special education has a name so close I couldn't help but use the pseudonym Dr. Do-Little. =)
"Chlöe"
Address
City, State, Zip
September 29, 2010
Dr. Do-Little
Director of Special Education
Unified School District
Address
City, State, Zip
RE: My Beautiful Child – D.O.B. 00-00-0000
Letter of Prior Written notice dated 9/24/2010
SENT VIA FAX AND MAIL
Dear Dr. Do-Little,
The purpose of this letter is to determine your reasoning behind denying my daughter, further outside speech therapy. In your letter of Prior Written Notice you simply state that you “respectfully deny” the request. Even with the additional two hours per week of therapy that she was receiving through Speech and Language Center for four months she was not able to meet all of her speech and language goals in the past. Now another expert has recommended that in order to overcome the issues of her Central Auditory Processing Disorder and gain from her education she requires two hours per week of Speech and Language Therapy outside of school hours, yet the district continues to say “no”.
I would think the district would take the recommendations of this expert seriously, especially considering that she is the district’s expert. I point this out to make it clear that although the district has repeatedly referred to this evaluation as an Independent Educational Evaluation it is not. It is the initial evaluation for CAPD offered by the district. This evaluation was only offered after several phone calls and my instructing district personnel on the fact that although district personnel have stated that CAPD had already been tested for, it had not since there is no district personnel legally qualified to test for CAPD. The only person qualified by law to administer testing for CAPD are audiologists, not school psychologists or speech therapists as I have been told by district personnel. Those people are only legally qualified to administer a screening test for CAPD, and given the significance of her CAPD I do not believe that the district was making even a minimal effort to screen for CAPD or it would have been revealed years ago when it could have been addressed with less difficulty and expense. In fact, had this been addressed early on, as it should have been, the district may have saved itself several thousands of dollars in overall special education expenses since from what I can gather, my beautiful daughter’s need for special education lies primarily, if not completely in her processing difficulties.
In addition, I do believe it is against the rules set forth in IDEA to conduct an IEP meeting without decision makers in attendance. Ms. DiGoo-Goo was not able to answer the question of additional speech therapy at the meeting, when in fact I believe you could have foreseen that the question might come up since the recommendation had been made in the report that the district was in receipt of well in advance of the IEP meeting on September 00, 2010.
Finally, I would ask that the district provide more than a cursory response in its Prior Written Notice, the law is clear that the district must provide an explanation, with factors that are relevant to the district’s refusal to provide necessary services as demonstrated by the expert who reported on this need in my daughter’s IEP meeting. Can you point to literature and/or other experts who would disagree with the expert the district referred us to? If so, I would wonder why the district would have referred us to her in the first place, but I believe we are owed more than a baseless opinion before we are willing to accept that this is the correct way to treat this educational condition.
Please get back to me at your earliest possible convenience and respond to my questions as well as letting me know how you intend to proceed to meet my daughter’s auditory processing disorder and speech and language issues since it is obvious that the IEP offer will not meet her needs at this time. When she was offered the services in her current IEP the district did not even realize that she had CAPD and so the district is apparently not willing to address this issue without adding further services to help her to overcome a condition that can be overcome with appropriate services.
Should you have any questions regarding this correspondence, please feel free to contact me. 000-000-0000.
Sincerely,
Really Tired of the District Avoiding It's Duty to Educate our kids
cc: My attorney
"Chlöe"
Address
City, State, Zip
September 29, 2010
Dr. Do-Little
Director of Special Education
Unified School District
Address
City, State, Zip
RE: My Beautiful Child – D.O.B. 00-00-0000
Letter of Prior Written notice dated 9/24/2010
SENT VIA FAX AND MAIL
Dear Dr. Do-Little,
The purpose of this letter is to determine your reasoning behind denying my daughter, further outside speech therapy. In your letter of Prior Written Notice you simply state that you “respectfully deny” the request. Even with the additional two hours per week of therapy that she was receiving through Speech and Language Center for four months she was not able to meet all of her speech and language goals in the past. Now another expert has recommended that in order to overcome the issues of her Central Auditory Processing Disorder and gain from her education she requires two hours per week of Speech and Language Therapy outside of school hours, yet the district continues to say “no”.
I would think the district would take the recommendations of this expert seriously, especially considering that she is the district’s expert. I point this out to make it clear that although the district has repeatedly referred to this evaluation as an Independent Educational Evaluation it is not. It is the initial evaluation for CAPD offered by the district. This evaluation was only offered after several phone calls and my instructing district personnel on the fact that although district personnel have stated that CAPD had already been tested for, it had not since there is no district personnel legally qualified to test for CAPD. The only person qualified by law to administer testing for CAPD are audiologists, not school psychologists or speech therapists as I have been told by district personnel. Those people are only legally qualified to administer a screening test for CAPD, and given the significance of her CAPD I do not believe that the district was making even a minimal effort to screen for CAPD or it would have been revealed years ago when it could have been addressed with less difficulty and expense. In fact, had this been addressed early on, as it should have been, the district may have saved itself several thousands of dollars in overall special education expenses since from what I can gather, my beautiful daughter’s need for special education lies primarily, if not completely in her processing difficulties.
In addition, I do believe it is against the rules set forth in IDEA to conduct an IEP meeting without decision makers in attendance. Ms. DiGoo-Goo was not able to answer the question of additional speech therapy at the meeting, when in fact I believe you could have foreseen that the question might come up since the recommendation had been made in the report that the district was in receipt of well in advance of the IEP meeting on September 00, 2010.
Finally, I would ask that the district provide more than a cursory response in its Prior Written Notice, the law is clear that the district must provide an explanation, with factors that are relevant to the district’s refusal to provide necessary services as demonstrated by the expert who reported on this need in my daughter’s IEP meeting. Can you point to literature and/or other experts who would disagree with the expert the district referred us to? If so, I would wonder why the district would have referred us to her in the first place, but I believe we are owed more than a baseless opinion before we are willing to accept that this is the correct way to treat this educational condition.
Please get back to me at your earliest possible convenience and respond to my questions as well as letting me know how you intend to proceed to meet my daughter’s auditory processing disorder and speech and language issues since it is obvious that the IEP offer will not meet her needs at this time. When she was offered the services in her current IEP the district did not even realize that she had CAPD and so the district is apparently not willing to address this issue without adding further services to help her to overcome a condition that can be overcome with appropriate services.
Should you have any questions regarding this correspondence, please feel free to contact me. 000-000-0000.
Sincerely,
Really Tired of the District Avoiding It's Duty to Educate our kids
cc: My attorney
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Creativity Key to Getting FAPE
The law says that the district has to provide an "appropriate" education so they fall back on that. But who is to say what is appropriate? I am currently trying to get my hands on the list put out for Speech and Language Therapists (SLP's) of what is recommended for different speech diagnoses. I believe that will help us in settling what is appropriate, at least getting us closer for what appropriate services are for speech. I doubt we will ever get what they suggest without attorneys and due process which is quite frankly very difficult emotionally to go through, not to mention expensive if you use an attorney. It seems that having an actual therapist there to advocate for what their report says carries a lot more weight, and we have had ours done as IEE's (paid for by the district) and they have insisted on the person who writes the report attending the meeting. Even if the district doesn't insist and therefore will not pay for them to come, I would highly recommend paying them to come to the meeting. You can request that you go over their area first and let them leave as soon as their portion is done to save some money.
I try to avoid any SLP who will just write in whatever the district tells them to give as far as what type and amount of services, this is unethical and tells me that the person is really there just for the paycheck. We currently are fighting for continued speech while in "Stay-put", but we have two different speech evaluations by the same person, one dated the day before the districts "pre IEP meeting" that they aren't supposed to have recommending staying with what she already has and one dated the day after their "pre IEP meeting" that isn't supposed to happen that cuts their recommended services to 33% of what was recommended before that meeting they weren't supposed to have. Everything else stayed the same. I always look for this kind of thing or for the therapist to say something like, "they really need more, but we can't take them out of class for so many hours a week" because then we have them. Then they must provide a Non-Public Agency to cover what the child actually needs. Surprisingly these mistakes happen all the time. Especially when you get the teacher and/or the SLP (or whatever area you looking at) to work with you. I love to give them little thank yous at Christmas and at the end of the school year and offer to help with a party or two or three a year. My daughter's teacher isn't crafty, so I always do a winter craft for her. These kinds of things can get you the help you need in the IEP meetings (or at least little hints outside of meetings of what is coming). I really am not excessive, I give them $10 gift cards and some homemade cookies or candy.
Right now, our daughter is in Home and Hospital Instruction or HHI (due to recent surgery) and we are probably going to keep her there until we can get some real progress made. Her doctors have agreed to sign the necessary documentation and that way a teacher comes to the house for 1 hour per day of school for the week. That way we can do all the other therapies as needed and not interrupt her school day. It means that I have no time to myself, but it's worth it. I'm sure it's not a lot different for the home-schooling moms except that I get help in teaching her the academic things. They can be in HHI for many reasons, including difficulty with fluorescent lights setting off seizures, psychological needs, physical needs, severe sensory-motor issues that make the classroom too frightening or intense for the child to learn, really any reason. Our daughter learns much better in the home environment so why not use that to help her for the time being?
Creativity is the key in our quest for the proper education.
I try to avoid any SLP who will just write in whatever the district tells them to give as far as what type and amount of services, this is unethical and tells me that the person is really there just for the paycheck. We currently are fighting for continued speech while in "Stay-put", but we have two different speech evaluations by the same person, one dated the day before the districts "pre IEP meeting" that they aren't supposed to have recommending staying with what she already has and one dated the day after their "pre IEP meeting" that isn't supposed to happen that cuts their recommended services to 33% of what was recommended before that meeting they weren't supposed to have. Everything else stayed the same. I always look for this kind of thing or for the therapist to say something like, "they really need more, but we can't take them out of class for so many hours a week" because then we have them. Then they must provide a Non-Public Agency to cover what the child actually needs. Surprisingly these mistakes happen all the time. Especially when you get the teacher and/or the SLP (or whatever area you looking at) to work with you. I love to give them little thank yous at Christmas and at the end of the school year and offer to help with a party or two or three a year. My daughter's teacher isn't crafty, so I always do a winter craft for her. These kinds of things can get you the help you need in the IEP meetings (or at least little hints outside of meetings of what is coming). I really am not excessive, I give them $10 gift cards and some homemade cookies or candy.
Right now, our daughter is in Home and Hospital Instruction or HHI (due to recent surgery) and we are probably going to keep her there until we can get some real progress made. Her doctors have agreed to sign the necessary documentation and that way a teacher comes to the house for 1 hour per day of school for the week. That way we can do all the other therapies as needed and not interrupt her school day. It means that I have no time to myself, but it's worth it. I'm sure it's not a lot different for the home-schooling moms except that I get help in teaching her the academic things. They can be in HHI for many reasons, including difficulty with fluorescent lights setting off seizures, psychological needs, physical needs, severe sensory-motor issues that make the classroom too frightening or intense for the child to learn, really any reason. Our daughter learns much better in the home environment so why not use that to help her for the time being?
Creativity is the key in our quest for the proper education.
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