E50: Do You Need a Facilitated IEP? With Katherine Rains (CO Dept of Edu)
Have you heard of Facilitated IEPs? Learn what they are, the process, and who can request one (free of charge) to make your next IEP feel more understandable and therefore have you advocating like a boss!
Sometimes, we may need a little help to make sure the IEP meeting goes smoothly. That is where special education facilitators come in. Today, we are talking with a special guest about facilitated IEPs.
In this episode, Katherine Rains from the Colorado Department of Education is joining me to share all the details about facilitated IEPs and what her role is. We are talking about what a facilitated IEP meeting is, the benefits of having a facilitated IEP meeting for both the parents and school staff, and why a facilitated IEP meeting may be requested. She is sharing so much great information that you won’t want to miss!
If you’re still trying to figure out what your child’s IEP data means, I have just the solution! Join me for the Decoding IEP Workshop where I am breaking it all down for you in 1 hour of workshop, 1 hour of live Q & A, and an exclusive Facebook group for any follow-up questions and support!
Be sure to join my Facebook group, The Parent IEP Lab Insiders, to ask any questions you have and connect with others who have moved. We are an amazing community that is here to support you!
In this episode, we cover:
- What a facilitated IEP meeting is
- Why a facilitated meeting is beneficial for both parents and school staff
- What the process is for working with an special education facilitator
- Where to find resources for connecting with a special education facilitator
- Reasons why a facilitated IEP meeting may be requested
Connect with Beth:
Related Podcast Episodes:
- Episode 34 – 3 reasons why IEP meetings are stressful (and what to do about it!)
- Episode 30 – Let’s Talk Advocates! A Neurodivergent Parent and Advocate’s Perspective
- Episode 26 – Episode 26: When is it time to Hire A Special Education Lawyer? With Julie Carter from Julie Carter Law
Resource link: https://www.cadreworks.org/
Beth 0:00
If you’re listening to this podcast and I’m guessing that you haven’t had a perfect IEP experience, am I right? So if you have felt nervousness, or a little bit of anxiety and looking forward to your next IEP, because you have gotten overwhelmed, or because you haven’t really understood what everybody is talking about in that IEP meeting, than I want you to be so excited about this episode, because today, we are asking the question, what is a facilitated IEP? How can you figure out if your state offers free facilitated IEP s. And I cannot wait to see if it’s something that you want to take your state up on, so that you can slow down the meeting actually understand what’s happening during the meeting. And just to relieve some of that stress and anxiety inside the meeting. Stay tuned because my guest today Katherine Raines from the Colorado Department of Education is teaching us all about facilitated IEP s stick with me.
You are listening to the Parent IEP lab podcast. This is the podcast that helps you get an effective Individualized Education Program or IEP for your child without having to constantly fight with the school. I’m Beth Liesenfeld, occupational therapist who has participated in over 400 IEP meetings. My mission is to help you turn insider knowledge of the schools, processes and cultures into effective parent advocacy for your child.
Have you ever looked at your child’s IEP or maybe their last evaluation report and thought, this is way too much? I don’t understand what all of this means? Well, don’t worry, I’ve got a great solution for you that I think you are going to love. The decoding IEP data workshop is designed to help you understand the two different types of data, how schools use that data, and what sections are most important to pay attention to when you are looking at getting your child a supportive IEP. It’s one hour of workshop, one hour of live q&a And a Facebook group to get your follow up questions answered. And did I mention it’s only $27? Go to the IEP lab.com/data and sign up for the next workshop. It’s done live but the recording is available for life. Again, go to the IEP lab.com/data Or just click the link in the show notes. And I will see you there. Now let’s get into the episode.
Welcome to the podcast today. I’m super excited to talk about facilitated IEP with Katherine Raines, Katherine, welcome to the podcast.
Good morning. Thanks for having me!
So I am really excited to dive in. But first, I think we need to go through a little bit of your background, because you’re just a fascinating person. And you have such an amazing diverse background. Do you want to tell us a little bit about your history, what you do, and a little bit about how you’re doing what you’re doing?
Sure. I don’t want to know how far you want me to go back. But basically, I have been doing this specific work for almost five years. So the start of the fall school year will be my fifth year, being part of Colorado Department of Education is team of what we refer to ourselves as as regional Special Education facilitators. Prior to that, I do have a background in law. I did go to law school. My other education is in public administration. I did spend about a dozen years working in different educational environments, preschool, I helped found a charter school, I chaired the Colorado Special Education Advisory Committee as well through some of those efforts, and not necessarily the most traditional path to get into this educational field. But it did bring me here and I have to say I absolutely love it. So thanks again for having me. It’s a it’s a passion of mine. And I look forward to talking to your audience about it.
Yeah, fantastic. So let’s get into facilitated IEPs. And actually, what started this topic coming up is I got a direct message from a parent who did not have a great relationship with her school team. And she was like, Do you know what a facilitated IEP is? Are they on the district side? Should I approve for them to be there or not? And I’ve been in several a facilitated IEP is on the school side, and you are actually in one or both of those meetings. I can’t remember. So can you just go through what actually is a facilitated IEP?
So facilitated IEP meetings are basically an awesome opportunity to support really great communication between all members of an IEP team by bringing in an impartial third party, in Colorado that would be one of us, to sort of run the meeting for that team so the team, parents, school staff, district staff, service providers can really focus their time on the actual conversation around the student’s needs. And they don’t have to worry about things like keeping everybody on time and on task and focused on the agenda. Because as a facilitator, I do that for the team.
And the other cool thing is we really are impartial, we’re not there to support any one side, or to even really have an opinion, we’re there to what we say create space for everybody to have a really good conversation and give everyone a chance to ask their questions, provide their input, and get any sort of concerns they have addressed throughout the course of the meeting.
In Colorado, we call it Special Education facilitation instead of just IEP facilitation or a facilitated IEP, because we will support an array of special education meetings, and we don’t hold ourselves just to doing like an annual review of an IEP or an initial IEP meeting. But you definitely want to check with your state to find out how the process works and how to access it. But for us, it really is just the ability to access a neutral third party that nobody is paying for. And so we’re not aligned to either the parent or the district or the school team. And we just give you guys as IEP members, team members, the chance to really have this really robust conversation focused on the student by taking a lot of the pressure of some of the other stuff off the table and doing it for you.
Yeah, and I remember sitting in those meetings, and just feeling like I could take a deep breath, because meetings can happen so fast. And I think by you guys being there, and you introduce yourselves, you kind of slow the meeting down to make sure that everybody’s on the same page. And without that pressure to finish in an hour and have all of those tension layered on top of the time thing. And then on top of everything else that’s happening, it just felt like everything, just calm down a little bit.
Yeah. And I think that calmness really does help the school team as well feel less pressure to get it done. Because that’s not their job anymore. It’s our job. And so that takes the pressure off of the staff to and nearly able to really focus on the student and the parents questions and concerns and really answer based on their unique role on the team, whether it’s as the special ed teacher, the case manager, or an occupational therapist or speech therapist, you can really just focus on your data, your relationship with the student and answering the questions for the families. And we take sort of care of that process piece, which is what we like to say is that we’re there for the process, so the team can be there for the student.
And it really is, it’s an awesome thing. And obviously every state runs it a little different. And so obviously check in with your state education agency to see how you guys have facilitation. But for us, it’s free, we work for the state, we don’t work for any school district or any parent, and then whoever wants to can fill out a form and request a facilitator. And once we get that request, then we take it upon ourselves to make sure everybody’s in agreement with having us there. And then we sent out an introduction memo to the team, both parents and members from the school team as well, to sort of get input from them on sort of what the areas are of concern are, what type of meeting it is things like that. And so from that very start, we’re sort of taking that process piece creating the agenda and things like that off of everybody else’s lap so that we can sort of just make everybody calm down. Like you said, we don’t really, we don’t like to see it takes longer, but it does slow things down a little bit. People have time to breathe, we can help remove that need to rush through stuff.
Yes. So can you go into a little bit more detail about? Like, do you have a certain process that you do, like you just kind of mentioned something about you get in your referral, you send out an agenda? Can you kind of go through those steps in a very broad process? I guess. So we know what you actually would do.
Date by state, this is probably gonna be fairly similar, though the way we do it might be look one way and another state might look another. But basically, once the request is received, on our end, we have a process to make sure that there’s agreement. Once agreement is, you know, once we have agreement from whoever didn’t submit the request, we are assigned, one of us is assigned. I’m a regional facilitator. So in Colorado, we work by region. So most of the meetings I go to are in the Denver Metro area.
Once I get the actual request for a facilitator sent to me, I send out an introduction email to every contact person who is on that initial request. So there’ll be at least one parent if not two, there’ll be at least one or two members from the Special Education Team, usually the coordinator if it’s a bigger district, and then like the case manager or the special ed teacher. And so I sent out a very basic overview introducing myself, as well as the process. I send out a few different pieces of information. One of them is a general overview of Special Education facilitation.
The other one is the agreement to have a to their, which outlines basically some of the stuff, we’ve already talked about my role, what I am and what I’m not basically letting everyone know that even though yes, I do have a law degree, I’m not there in any sort of legal capacity, that I don’t represent the state, I’m not there to provide opinion, I’m not there to take sides. I’m also not there in any way that replaces other rights that parents have under the law. So all of those sorts of things are outlined in our agreement to have us there.
I also, and this is where we all have our own preferences, I also send out a copy of meeting guidelines, they’re not norms, but they’re sort of just things that I want people to have in their head ahead of time to make sure that we stay focused on the student.
And then the last thing that I send out is a request for information from meeting participants, both from parents and members of the school team. And that’s so that they can fill out this form. And it’s pretty easy. It’s just a few questions, to give me an idea of what is going on in that team. Like why they want a facilitator? Is there a serious conflict? In general? Like, is the relationship really broken down? And they just need someone to step in and sort of help that piece? Or is it one issue? Is it really just about the service minutes?
Or is it really just about the reading goals, it also helps me to understand what type of meeting it is, like I said, in Colorado, we’re a little different than in other states. So I’ve done manifestation meetings, I’ve done initial evaluations and eligibility meetings, I’ve done just additional meetings when the IEP piece is over. And everybody thought they were all on the same page, and then something changed or something happened and someone’s request an additional meeting. So I get as much information as I can through that form. And then once I receive that, I use it to develop an agenda for the meeting.
And that’s sort of when I take over the process, right? Once I send out that agenda to the team, that sort of me saying, okay, based on the information you guys sent us, this is what I think is going on, please let me know if I got it wrong. Otherwise, this is how we’re going to do the meeting today. And that’s basically sort of how we, how we do those introductions. It seems formal in that that first letter, but it’s not like a super arduous nerve racking process. It’s not like I’m gonna call in interrogate anyone or ask a bunch of questions. It’s pretty simple. And it gives people a chance to think about it and just fill out a form and send it back.
Yeah, I love that. And then you were talking about different meetings, you said, you’ve done mediation meetings as well, right?
No, actually, manifestation meaning manifestation. Okay?
That makes a lot more sense. Okay, mediation is…
completely and actually, that’s not a bad thing. Because I think sometimes that that happens, and people confuse us with mediators, outside of education, the distinction between facilitation and mediation is a little different within the within the confines of education, it’s a pretty significant difference, because mediation is part of the dispute processes that are formal and available to parents in school, underneath, you know, IDEA, whereas facilitation is completely voluntary. And you nobody has to do it, we’re just there if you want to use us.
And we do similar things, we use similar phrases, we use similar skills. But the big difference is mediation is part of the formal processes available to people under IDEA. And it’s a binding meeting, when you come to an agreement, and it’s outside of the IEP meetings themselves. Whereas when we come in, as a facilitator, we come into I say, we come into your building, or we come into your meeting, even though I do a lot of virtual meetings now. And so we come into your process, instead of removing the conflict and putting into sort of this mediation process. So facilitation is is different as far as what we can do with it. And what we can’t do, it doesn’t have the same level of confidentiality. And it’s not like a binding agreement, like a mediation, but it is part of an IEP meeting. And so you can as a team come to those decisions and make changes to an IEP word that you can’t do during a mediation.
Okay, that’s just a little less overwhelming, I’d say it’s just a little less official.
Okay, gotcha. Okay,
for us to come in.
That makes total sense. And then you talked a little bit already about, you need to check with your state to see if this resource is available. And I think you have a couple of resources to mention where parents can go to see if this is available in their state. Right.
Right. So the primary place that I would start or tell anyone to start with regards to getting information specific to facilitation and special education, as well as a starting point to figure out if you actually have it in your state, is to go to the website for CADRE, which is the Center for Appropriate dispute resolution and special education. And once you’re there, just look up special education, facilitation or IEP facilitation. That’s what they call it. Under stage three, conflict is the tab it’s under, and there’s a list of a bunch of the different states that do provide facilitation process. Now, according to that website, there’s 26 states or areas, including Washington, DC that have some sort of facilitation process available at the state level. I doubt that that’s an inclusive list. And so I would also just check with your own State Department of Education, a lot of times on the websites is going to be under dispute resolution, or adjacent to it. So if you look up dispute resolution, or you look up alternative dispute resolution in your website, like your state education website, if you have facilitation, or something similar in your state, it should show up there.
Okay. That’s awesome that you gave those search terms, because sometimes I feel like every state names things differently. Like even the IEP, sometimes it’s called an ARD. Right? It can get sort of confusing. So we talked a little bit about when a parent would want to request state facilitation. Can you talk about when is a good time to request state facilitation, and maybe throw in there a couple of common issues that you see that prompt facilitation that work really well?
Sure. And again, this is going to vary by state because some states have different processes in place as far as how to access a facilitator. So when I spoke, talk about specifics, this is in Colorado, and basically, based on my experience of serving as a facilitator.
I get requested for a variety of reasons. But mostly, I get requested when a team, whether from the parent perspective, or one of the members from the school side. And I hate to say it side, but we do have to kind of talk to that a little bit here. And there just feels like the meeting is not productive.
Either the team is just getting stuck on different topics and unable to work through the IEP process. And you know, from section to section, or if, and I’ll say this to families, if you’re feeling overwhelmed and not heard during the meeting, sometimes having a facilitator, like you had said earlier, can be really helpful to just sort of slow the process down and sort of take the temperature down a couple of degrees in the room and just give everybody a chance to breathe and, and feel heard.
And also when you start developing a conflict within the team. And that is there really is a couple of things you don’t see eye to eye on. But you’re not ready to go into those legal processes, you really want to still continue to talk about it and see if you can’t find consensus or common ground, that would be probably the most appropriate time to request a facilitator, because that really still leaves all decision making in the hands of the members of the IEP team. But you have a little bit of outside support, and neutral outside support to help you guys work through the conversation. And so if there’s just a lot of disagreement around goals, or service minutes, or LRE, any one part of the IEP, and you really would prefer to continue to talk about it with the members of the IEP team. But you’re sort of feeling like you’re not able to get unstuck or work through those things on your own, that would be a really good time to request a facilitator.
And again, one of the reasons why facilitation is I think one of the best avenues for IEP teams to take whether or not the request comes from the family or the school. And my favorite is when they agreed to request one of us and everybody agreed before we even got the request is that we don’t change anything about the decision making, it is still 100% within the IEP team, to have that conversation and to represent their chairs at the table. And you know, whether it’s the parents perspective, or the each individual service provider or special education, teachers perspective, all of the decision making is still on the team. And that just means that the IEP at the end of the day was still developed by the team. And it’s still based on the team’s thoughts and decision making around the needs of the student.
Once you leave the facilitation process and started going into some of those other routes for dispute resolution, the team loses the decision making power. And that is one of the coolest things about special education, in my opinion is the IEP team. It’s just this awesome thing that kids with that qualify for special and have the other kids don’t. And it’s all these people looking at them and their education, through like their own specific lens and then coming together and having this awesome conversation about what they need in the education setting. And the more you can keep those decisions as close to the child as possible. So within that school and within the members of the team directly working with the student and the parents who directly have obviously the most impact and the most time with their child, the better for just buyin and overall comfortableness with regards to the special education plan.
Yeah, and I love how you say like the closer the people are to the kid, the better decisions are gonna be made. Because I mean, if you think about it, because you probably don’t even meet most of the kids that you’re talking came about right? Yeah.
I mean, you know, when kids get older and they start coming to their own IEP meetings, I need them. But otherwise, no.
Yeah. And do you see any paperwork before you come into the meeting?
That’s really funny. That varies depending on the situation. And it has changed while we’ve been working on this process. Okay, when we first started doing it, we didn’t get much information upfront, because we don’t technically need it, you can facilitate a meeting without really knowing what’s going on. Because it’s a process. You know, it’s asking questions, it’s giving people a chance to provide their input. It’s focusing on an agenda and a set of goals and outcomes and things like that. But when we switched to virtual meetings, we found it a lot easier to have a copy of information ahead of time so that we could look at it you I mean, obviously, nobody can tell because you’re just listening to me talk. But I have lots of screens. And it just for the virtual setting there was it was a lot harder for me to look at the screen share of the IEP and watch teeny, tiny little faces on the screen to facilitate the meeting. So we started asking for more information in advance because it just was more helpful in the virtual environment. Yeah. And now that we’re swinging back to in person, sometimes I have access, sometimes I don’t, I do prefer to have some information just so I can sort of spot trigger areas or areas where I can anticipate there might be some disagreement.
Yeah, I would think that that would be helpful that when you and I
were in a meeting together, I don’t think we got anything back then. Because I think that was a while ago. It was
a while ago, it was pre COVID that were in meetings together. Yeah. But I actually think we did one in person before COVID. And then I think we did another one virtual. So I’ve been in both of those situations. And I just remember, because you guys typically do them with two people on the facilitation team, or is that not true?
Actually, I think is kind of ironic, I think the meetings that you went to was when we were training each other, you know, so typically, and again, this is going to vary by state. I’m not sure how other states do it. Typically, it’s just one of us. Okay, so typically, I just facilitate meetings by myself, there are times when a second facilitator can be helpful to me, personally, my preference is only if it’s an in person meeting. And it’s humongous. Okay, good. Those high school meetings where the you have just, you know, you have a child with some really significantly complicated IEP needs. And you have 25 people in the room, right, once you get all of the providers and the outside providers, once they’re, you know, and all sorts of other stuff. So for me, it’s usually if it’s a really big meeting in person is when I have someone co facilitate, but as far as sort of what we do to ensure fidelity of practice is that we sometimes observe each other. Or because I’ve been on the team the longest, when a new facilitator starts, sometimes they shadow me, and then I shadow them. And so you may just have accidentally had meetings where that’s what we were doing.
That’s really funny, because I do remember, your roles were very clear, because somebody was facilitating, and somebody was the note taker. And I remember even under virtual meeting, somebody had like an easel behind them. And they were making notes so that you could see it in the camera behind them. And so I just thought that there were two people, but that’s apparently not always necessary.
Right? And again, everybody does things like that their own way I and some people prefer co facilitation. And you’re right, when we do it that way, regardless of the reason we do this, we do delineate the roles like that, just so everyone knows sort of who to pay attention to for what?
Yes, so helpful. So I think you might have a couple more resources for parents do you have a couple more resources for them.
As far as specific to facilitation, I do recommend doing research in your own state. Also, along with a list of facilitators, that CADRE there’s a bunch of other information on that research around facilitation and why it’s effective and why we want to use it, as well as some training videos that could be really, really helpful to parents and teachers alike. There’s the CDE website, we have a couple of webinars recorded, as well as some of the information that we provide. And then also, you can reach out to your parent, here we have PEAK Parent Center, but whatever your state agency parent training organization is they’re super helpful. And they’ll know if you have facilitation in your area as well, and how to get a hold of those people.
Yeah, that is a great connection as well. Is there anything else that you want to talk about, as far as facilitated meetings go that we missed as we wrap up?
Well, I don’t know if I sort of glossed too much over what examples I see of things that might be helpful as far as when to ask for a facilitator. Yeah, I mean, I basically gave an overview of, you know, how you feel when you want to ask for it overwhelms you don’t think things are going well, things like that. When as far as examples of times where or trends I see or something like If that were I think facilitation has been super helpful.
Again, size of the meeting is sometimes something that I would say is a good time to ask for a facilitator. If the family has requested an IEE and has some outside providers coming to talk to the team, if there’s an advocate involved, if you just feel like the team, the meetings are really large, just because of how many service providers and things like that are needed for the student. That’s time when we get requests for a facilitator. And that isn’t always around conflict, per se, just complicated conversations, it can be appropriate to bring us in before there’s a conflict to sort of help prevent one. And in some ways, sometimes just because things are so big, it really, we can use our skills and all of our attention to keep the team focused on the student, the team focused on the agenda and what needs to get accomplished. And that kindness can go by the wayside sometimes when meetings get really big.
Another time that lately especially is the confusion and nuances around different parts of the IEP and things that have happened during COVID. And as we continue to sort of recover, for lack of a better word from all of the disruptions in education, especially special education, as a result of the pandemic, especially if the parents are feeling like they don’t understand a certain part of the IEP, one that comes up a lot right now is extended school year, or ESY. So if the family doesn’t really understand the process, or they don’t feel like they’re getting your questions answered, effectively, or even if they’re getting their questions answered, but they still don’t really understand what that specific processes for, you know, you can always ask for a facilitator, or at least in Colorado, to help support a conversation around something as specific but complicated as whether or not a student qualifies for extended school year.
Another thing that can be really helpful, again, when there has been conflict, and a student is transitioning from one school to another, like elementary to middle school or middle school to high school, sometimes those handoffs can be pretty rough, and also very big. So I’ve done transition meetings before where I just helped sort of leave the past in the past and help the team transition to the next set of expectations and goals and meeting the new team and things like that. And I you know, again, it just depends on the child and depends on the circumstances, most of the time that I am requested. It’s because things are starting to, there’s concerns that are starting to level up, but they haven’t reached the level what I would call like dispute dispute where they need to go have someone else start helping them make decisions.
They’re still in a place where the team can talk it through writing goals, what they should look like how they should be measured, things like that. A facilitator can really help slow down that conversation so that parents really understand what the goals are tracking. Because I know I joke, I say that education is the only thing with more acronyms than the law. So when you start putting the law and education together, it can be just very overwhelming to people that don’t have the educational background to understand all the different terms. So
Oh, I like that saying we should put that in a T shirt or something with acronyms.
It was like only learning a whole new language for me when I started working in education.
Me too. Yeah. And I talk about that sometimes too, coming from the medical background to like, who maybe saw one IEP in grad school, and then you come out and you’re expected to do it. And then when I was in schools, I was like asking the parents questions will the parents don’t know? So then they’re asking me questions. They’re like, why does she not know what she’s doing? Like? I don’t know. Nobody does something, you just can’t trust them?
I like hearing that, because I think that’s something that I see in meetings, but nobody wants to say that out loud. Nobody wants to say that the people in the room are there for the student. Not the paperwork. Yes. So I don’t know he’s been there for paperwork. So
that’s a perfect, perfect match, then. Okay, anything else that we want to address before we wrap up?
Really, the best way to do it is to find out what’s available in your area is to either go to CODRE website, or go to your state educational agency and ask, but if things are still within the realm of everyone getting along, okay, frankly, just ask your case manager and if they don’t know as their coordinator or their supervisor, or whoever else at the district or school level, and just see if they know, because I am always I always appreciate when I receive a request for facilitation where everybody already agreed to have me there before they even submitted the form. So just start local before and maybe you’ll be surprised and you can find a facilitator by just asking someone at the school.
Perfect, I love it. Thank you so much for coming on to the podcast today and sharing your amazing knowledge and expertise. Just Thank you so much for helping. Absolutely.
And thank you for doing this. I think it’s a great resource for family. So I appreciate you asking me to be here as well.
Absolutely.
I hope you enjoyed that conversation with me and Katherine Rains as much as I did. She has such a wealth of knowledge, and she has such a depth of passion for what she does and the impact that she makes on families. It’s truly amazing. If you are wondering if your state has these facilitative services, I want you to come and join us in the Facebook group. If you go to the IEP lab, the IEP lab.com/podcast, you will see an icon that says Join us in the Facebook group. If you click that image, it will take you to the Facebook group where you can request access. We would love to hear about what state you’re in what age your kid is, so that we can connect you with facilitated IEP resources in your state and do a little digging together. Thank you so much for spending this hour with me. I hope you’re doing well and you’re having a good week, and we will see you same time, same place next week. Thanks so much.