E132: Early Intervention to Preschool Transition (Focus on Evaluation)
Is your child shortly turning 3 years old? Are they going to be transitioning from early intervention (or birth to 3 years old services) to school based services over the summer or into next year? Are you wondering if the approaches are different between an IFSP and an IEP?
Is your child shortly turning 3 years old? Are they going to be transitioning from early intervention (or birth to 3 years old services) to school based services over the summer or into next year?
Are you wondering if the approaches are different between an IFSP and an IEP?
In this episode we cover:
1) The process for your child being evaluated for qualification for an IEP step-by-step
2) Differences in approaches between the Individual Family Service Plan and an Indivualized Education Program
3) How to take advantage of the parent survey and input sections of this evaluation to ensure the team has the correct all complete information to determine eligibility and the appropriate supports to start with
4) 3 Questions to ask before leaving that evaluation
FREE Parent IEP Lab Listening Guide: www.TheIEPLab.com/listen
E132: Early Intervention to School Transition
Samson Q2U Microphone: [00:00:00] This is one of those transitions that can get really confusing because the early intervention system, or birth to three years old, is so family focused. And if you qualify, generally once you qualify in any category, you can get any service you would need. And they cover every aspect of life, like feeding, or home environmental stuff, or helping with scheduling, or whatever.
But schools just aren’t set up that way from a legal standpoint either. And it can be a little mystery as to why they run so differently. So if you have a child transitioning from early intervention to schools this summer or this coming year, here is your primer to understanding the transition and how to make sure your child gets their needs met from the start in the evaluation when we start that transition from early intervention to schools.
So stick with me. Today we are talking all about that third birthday and that transition from early intervention to schools.
Samson Q2U Microphone-1: You are listening to the Parent IEP Lab, the podcast that helps you become an [00:01:00] informed parent advocate to get your child supported and learning in school. I’m Beth Levenfeld, occupational therapist who started to notice trends in parents who got effective IEPs for their kids in over 400 IEP meetings that I’ve participated in over the years, collaboration was the cornerstone of the successful parents advocacy, and that’s what we teach here.
You are here because you aren’t scared of a little bit of work and you realize that you can harness the power a parent has to not only help your child get what they need, but also help fix this scrambled system and get its priorities back on Track One school i e p team at a time
My mission of the Parent IEP Lab podcast and also the online courses, workshops, and summit of the i E P lab is to break down barriers to being able to advocate with collaboration and the main way we do this is to provide you insider information from the school side so that you have context for what’s happening to create informed intelligent questions.
To ask your I e P team to have a clearer voice in your child’s plan. We also highlight guests that are specialists in those certain areas so that you have connections and resources to find what you need for [00:02:00] your specific situation. We only highlight strategies and information that is actually working right now, so you can take action to make some serious headway in getting your child supported. So let’s dive into today’s topic, and think about what we can change and tweak to get the right formula for success for your child to learn and grow at school.
Welcome to the lab.
Samson Q2U Microphone-2: Have you ever found a new podcast and it’s amazing. It’s exactly what you need to hear . And then you get into it and week after week you start saying, okay that episode doesn’t necessarily pertain to me, but I still want to keep listening because it’s so helpful.
Well, We’ve kind of hit that mark as far as the Parent IUP Lab has gone because 132 episodes later and we’re starting to have some episodes that really focus in on some really niche, really small topics that may not pertain to you, but you also might be missing past episodes that would be super helpful for you.
So, that is why I went through every single episode of the Parent IEP Lab podcast. We selected the most helpful [00:03:00] ones and we organized them into categories. And that is available for download in the Parent IEP Lab podcast guide. So you can snag your free copy at theieplab. com. And if you’re like, well, what kind of categories are you talking about? In it, we break down if you are new to IEPs, what episodes are most helpful for that. We also have a neurodivergent student category. We also have a student with medical disabilities and learning disabilities so that we focus in on the topics that are most helpful for you.
And of course, we also have a top downloaded category as well. So click over to get your free listening guide, head over to the IUPLAB.
com slash listen. And that link again is below this podcast and your podcast player. Now let’s get into the episode.
Beth: I’m really excited to dive into the start of this topic of transitioning from early intervention or EI as it’s sometimes called into the school-based service setting. And to be honest, I’ve had this on the podcast schedule for [00:04:00] really long time, but I think that the topic is so big that I’ve struggled with exactly what to include and.
I have worked on all sides of this transition and I’ve been with families as they transition, and in thinking about what I wanted to share, I kinda had to chunk up what I was talking about.
We are really hyper focused on just that evaluation piece, like what actually happens at the beginning of this. And then I have three questions at the end that I really want you to ask before you leave that evaluation. And that’s really gonna help you with expectations for what is happening next. I think the biggest thing that I hear from parents in this transition is that you have no idea what to expect because overnight the expectations change,
your child doesn’t drastically change when they’re. Two years and 11 months old to when they’re three. But the way that the legal system of supports is set up, [00:05:00] the expectations and the programs are very, very different. And it can be really hard to know what’s coming, and it can be really hard to transition to a whole new team all at once that has very different expectations.
So we are going to start with a little bit of. A definition of what each program is there for, because I think that’s really important in setting up really your role in each of these programs and understanding why they’re asking, the questions they’re asking and why it feels different.
I think this will really help. So let’s start with early intervention services so that program that is run through the state is really meant to support you as the parent. You are the focus of the intervention. Even though your child is there, it is supposed to be to address the concerns and the skills that you need to build as a parent to help facilitate skill building in your child.
So when I did early intervention, this was before I was in [00:06:00] schools, it was really helpful to be in the home environment and it was really parent led. What are they working on right now? What kind of struggles are you having? How can I help? You know, I would step in and try some play things. I would model things for the parent and then I would step back and see if the parent could continue those skills and, and see if they had more success than I would sometimes.
They would because they have more rapport with your child. Right? So really if you had a concern in early intervention and yes, times have changed a little bit since then. I know there’s a lot of shortages for therapists and teachers in early intervention and this has also changed in doing it virtually a little bit over covid.
But when you’re in the system, whatever concerns that you had would be addressed. So let me give you an example from Colorado. I was serving this amazing family and going inside their home.
And they were having some sensory [00:07:00] difficulties with their child. She was like two, two and a half. And so over the course of maybe three or four months, we worked together on these specific things that they were encountering within their home environment. And they were amazing. They were easy to work with.
They told me what they were struggling with, we could work through it together. They implemented strategies when I wasn’t there, and when I came back, they were like ready for the next question in the, in the next step. So over the course of. Like I said, I think it was like three, maybe four months, they came to a point where they didn’t need me anymore.
I would show up and they’d be like, yeah, I think everything’s actually okay. And I’m like, okay, this is the time that we discharge if you don’t have any concerns. But they still had one concern, which was her going upstairs just looked a little funky. It didn’t look smooth. She was having some trouble with it.
They lived on the second story and she needed to be able to do stairs, so, I contacted the case manager and I said, Hey, you know, this is above, you [00:08:00] know, my skillset. I think they should really be able to access a PT if they can. And all that happened on my last visit was the case manager came in, got input from the parents, changed the I F S P, which is the equivalent of the I E P in early intervention, and they put the call out for the PT and a PT started within the next couple weeks and she addressed that concern that they had and it was such.
An an easy transition at that time, at least in that situation. And that is because that program is there to support any concerns that the parents and the child have now in school systems, it’s a different qualification process and they actually have to qualify for each individual thing. So I see it over and over again where parents are trying to ask for more ot, but that’s actually not the way that that works in the school setting.
It’s. It’s different. There has to be a [00:09:00] qualification process, and instead of asking for a service, you should be asking for a problem to be addressed. And it’s up to the whole team to decide who is the best person to actually address that problem. And you might not want an OT at the end of the day, after the team talks it out, you might be like, oh, that OT isn’t going to be in the building every day.
That changes things. I want somebody to be there every day to support them. That’s gonna be a different situation so the purposes are different. In also that the schools are there to really prepare your child for learning. Preschool is still a very fun environment. They have so much fun in there, and I love serving preschools.
Can you tell? But they do wanna make sure that they’re identifying barriers to participation and learning in that pre-academic classroom. So instead of developing your own routines at home and how you can. So quickly, like [00:10:00] change your routine around, or you can change the time, or you can alter this or that.
In the routine, you can add stuff or take things out in the classroom. It’s more structured than that because you have more kids that need to follow the same structure. So now you’re saying, oh, okay, do they fit okay in this, or are there gonna be additional needs and supports? To be able to meet those expectations.
So it is very different. It feels like you as the parent, don’t have as much control, because to be honest, you can. You don’t, I mean, it’s no longer in your home environment. We’re talking about the school setting now. Like I said, I worked early intervention before I worked in schools. So I didn’t really have a good idea of how this evaluation or transition process worked.
And then it was only after I worked in schools and worked on the child find team for several years that I was like, okay, I, I get it. I get what they’re coming from, what that evaluation looks like and what preschool, and then the kindergarten [00:11:00] transition after that look like as a whole. And I’ve seen kids go through the whole thing.
So I look at a lot of the therapists that serve early intervention, and a lot of them do not have any experience with the schools. So you might feel like your team is kind of drawing back or saying that they, they don’t know if you’re asking them questions. And this podcast is supposed to kind of give you some direction about what that looks like, um, because sometimes your team can.
Be really, really close to you. You know, you’ve spent time with them. Oftentimes, people who work in early intervention are very helpful, very caring people, but they might start to pull back and not have answers to you if you start asking about this transition. Now, some of them might have, you know, been in early intervention, a long time, been with families as they transition from one to the other.
They might be a great resource for you, but some of them, Just might not know, and they don’t wanna promise you something if they’re not sure if it’s gonna happen or not. Especially if you [00:12:00] have a child that might not qualify for an I E P, they’re gonna be hesitant about telling you one way or the other, especially if you know you haven’t been working with them for very long, or they’re just very careful about what they’re doing.
Because they don’t wanna promise you that they’ll qualify and then they not qualify. So you might feel like they’re backing off a little bit and you might feel like you’re unsupported as you go through this transition. So I’m here for you. I trying to give you, A little bit of a heads up and some questions to ask to prepare for that.
So hopefully that helps in understanding the systems a little bit more. So just to summarize, early intervention is really there to support you as a parent and your child in developing all of the skills that they can in their home environment. And the school services are really meant to assess. If they’re able to access that pre-academic learning and if they will have some barriers that need addressing and really [00:13:00] supports to help them access their pre-academic curriculum.
So there’s, there’s a different intention for those, and you might feel that in the types of questions that they ask you. So let’s dive into what actually happens at the evaluation. If you are in the early intervention system, these systems are connected through the coordinators of each program. So your paperwork will be forwarded to the person who is going to do the evaluation for school-based.
Qualification. So you might hear from a coordinator of a program that will say, Hey, your child’s birthday is coming up. We need to get them into an evaluation. And so they will be the one that schedules it with you. There might be, you know, a secretary that helps with some paperwork because you will fill out like an a SQ assessment that is a, an outline of like where they are with their skills.
You might have some other intake paperwork you. [00:14:00] Hopefully we always did, and I really hope for you too. There was always a packet of information that you filled out with your own concerns, and this is what I’m talking about. This is the opportunity for you to advocate. Okay, so when it says, do you have concerns on this? Do you have concerns on this? You can write out your concerns and really take your time with detailing out what your concerns are on that paperwork. And most of the team will review that paperwork before you even get into to the appointment so that they know what assessments they’re gonna do.
They know what questions they’re gonna ask you. They know what they’re wondering about. So the more detailed you can be and more accurate you can be on those assessments before you even get into the evaluation, the better. Okay. A lot of times it’ll be hard for the team if that a S Q or some other assessment comes back in the normal range, and then we’re like, oh, well, Why are, what are their [00:15:00] concerns?
Like why are they coming in? And there’s a lot of parents that don’t realize what is average skills, what’s not. And we tend, and I see this with my son as well, I find myself helping him a lot more than he needs. And especially when grandma comes down and plays with him, I’m like, he can do that independently.
He can do that without you helping. So we tend to help our kids a lot more than they probably need. So really try to be objective when you’re filling out that information on do they actually need help with that? Are you actually helping them set up that activity for them to be able to access it?
Are you doing more than you think that you’re doing? Because a lot of us as parents, do, we just naturally do cuz we care about our kid. Right. And we also are avoiding, you know, having some, some friction with activities as well. Right? We want to set them up for success. We want them to enjoy it and to be busy for a little bit so we [00:16:00] can get our stuff done, whatever we’re trying to do.
So really be accurate on that paperwork. That’s your opportunity to really, you know, be honest about the support that your child might need in a different environment. So the second thing that happens, the first thing is kind of pre-meeting paperwork, scheduling that evaluation. The second thing is the actual evaluation.
So typically you will bring your child into a classroom that is empty and kind of set up for evaluations, or some districts will have screenings where you kind of go from station to. Station and you’ll bring your paperwork with you as you go, and they’ll test all different kinds of things at different stations, and then you might be referred for an evaluation after that time as well.
It kind of depends on what the screening looks like, but anyway, so you’ll bring your child in for an evaluation and it will look very much like a classroom with a ton of toys in it, because at this age, we really want to look at them in a playful way. We wanna look [00:17:00] at their skills. We wanna look at what they’re motivated by, what they like, so that we get to know them a little bit better.
And just a reminder, we’re gonna look at them for about 45 minutes or an hour. All of that information is basically gonna come from you. We’re gonna have some observation skills, we’re gonna have some assessments that we do in that time, but it is such a short window, and for especially autistic children, just if they’re having a good day, then we won’t see a lot.
If they’re having a bad day, that actually gives a good idea of what supports they might need on a bad day. So, Don’t feel bad if they’re having a bad day. That’s actually pretty helpful for the team to really identify, okay, they might need this support and this support because we’re really seeing some hesitancy and some troubles and some difficulty around these types of tasks, and that’s okay.
They are used to seeing that. We actually like seeing that so that we can see, okay, this is a bad day for them. How can we support them better? And it really gives a good indication of what [00:18:00] services they might need. So if you have a medically complex child, if you have a child with autism or some other, you know, if you have concerns in multiple areas or if they were getting multiple therapies through early intervention, this, this evaluation can feel really intimidating because there might be a lot of people there at once.
I think the most people we had was like the parents and the child, so, And probably about seven or eight people, and I’m telling you this, to really prepare yourself that, and this was a child who had a hearing impairment, some vision concerns. So we had the teacher of visually impaired there. We had the audiologist, we had the deaf and heart of hearing teacher there.
We had ot, we had pt, we had speech therapy, we had all kinds of things. And. So we all kind of swarmed the parent. So [00:19:00] you can ask that coordinator beforehand who all is gonna be there, how many people am I gonna be interacting with? And they are all super nice people, but they will all probably have some questions for you.
Most of the time, like the PT and I as the OT could tag team and we can ask a lot of the same questions so that you don’t have to say the things, same things twice, but. You will kind of be inundated with a lot of questions, so I just wanna give you a heads up on that. You can always ask the coordinator how many people are gonna be there, if that makes you a little bit nervous.
Okay. The third thing that happens is kind of within this evaluation, they’ll probably play with your child and do some observations while somebody’s talking to you or while you’re filling out more assessments. They actually have some assessments that can be done on the computer. So they might email you some assessments that they need.
They might have some on paper, like my sensory assessments were always done on paper, so I’d give you a clipboard so that you could do it and, and do it [00:20:00] right then and get it done. And I might have some follow up questions about that as well. So during that, you know, setting, you’ll have a little bit of time, you know, kind of away from your child to express some concerns if you don’t want them to overhear you as well.
Or you can ask to step to the side. Anything like that, um, is a good idea and things to think about. Now with Covid, this changed a little bit, but I know our star was really trying to get some kids. An observation within a preschool classroom, because a lot of times, and this is the most difficult thing about this transition, is that they are transitioning settings.
So it’s really hard to anticipate what it’s going to look like when they’re in a preschool classroom. If they haven’t been to daycare yet. If they haven’t been to like, Libraries or out in public in structured situations. So we saw this a lot during C O V I D that it’s like, while you guys probably aren’t going out much, are you?
And the answer was like, no, we’re [00:21:00] staying at home. You know, we’re going for walks. We’re doing things with family sometimes, but not even that much. So it was really hard for the team to discover like, is this a disability? Is this a delay or is this just something that’s happened through covid? Now, at the time of this recording, things are opening back up.
Things are back to quote unquote normal. In, in that we can go to story time at the library, we can go to public places, and so this should help your child just be in a different setting.
But regardless, it’s really nice for that team to be able to see your child in a preschool setting. And they might do it right then. They might have the preschool classroom next door and they might, you know, join a circle time or join a play time and they’ll just see, you know, are they sharing toys? Are they able to like, Be aware, safety-wise of what’s going on in the classroom.
Are they gonna need somebody to help them navigate through the classroom? Are they a wheelchair user? Are they, you know, how can they communicate their needs when they’re away from you a little bit? Do they have a [00:22:00] device? Can they use it? Um, You know, all of those things that just take some eyes on, so they’re not being critical.
They’re just seeing will this child need support to do this, this, and this? And it’s just easier to see if they’re actually in that classroom. So that might be part of the evaluation as well. So that’s it. After 45 minutes or an hour, usually your child is really tired by that time because they’ve been playing the hard out and they might need a little bit of a break.
That is what the evaluation looks like. Now, like I said, you might have more assessments to fill out, especially the school psychologist. If you have them on board, they will probably have a lengthy questionnaire for you that you have to go home and do. But it’s all really good information. So before you leave, That evaluation.
Here are my recommendation questions for asking that coordinator so that you make sure that you’re on the offensive and you’re stepping into your parent role. Okay? Because they don’t [00:23:00] have, like when you went through your early intervention assessments, Typically they’ll give you some kind of hint, at least a, a percentage of delay by the time you leave.
So you leave with something you might not totally understand what it means. You might have met with somebody afterwards and they’d explained it to you, but in this situation, they don’t even have all the data yet, so they really don’t give you any indication of if they’re gonna qualify or not, which sounds.
Really secretive, and it sounds really bad, but that’s just the way that the system works because they have to have the numbers in hand and they have to look at the whole picture and everybody else’s assessment. Like I would have to look at the speech therapy assessment once they got done to see if they were gonna qualify and what holes I needed to fill as the ot.
You know, I would talk with a psych and say, are you putting them on? Is the teacher putting them on? Because as a related service, I was last. Right. I. I filled any holes that anybody else didn’t address with their services, and I had to make sure that somebody else qualified because I, as the OT, [00:24:00] couldn’t qualify on my own.
So, It, it’s always like a back and forth thing and looking at the whole data before we come to that evaluation meeting so that we can be clear with the whole picture. So here’s the three questions. So if you’re multitasking come back to me. We’re almost done with the episode, and these are the most important questions to ask before you leave that evaluation.
Okay. Number one is when will I get a copy of the evaluation report prior to the meeting? A lot of parents do not ask this because they’re new to the system. They don’t know what’s coming next. They don’t know that they can ask for it, but I want you to make sure that you get a copy of the evaluation report before the meeting.
To go over the evaluation results, you might not understand everything in that evaluation report. That’s okay. You will have some indication of what they’re talking about and then you can come with questions to that meeting to say, Hey, I didn’t understand this part. Can you [00:25:00] go over that? And so you make sure that you understand it by the end of that evaluation meeting.
The other thing is that you really wanna make sure that they didn’t miss anything. So those concerns that you had in the beginning when you were filling out paperwork, make sure that. All of those concerns that you had are addressed in that evaluation report. Now, you might have had some concerns surrounding feeding, let’s say, and feeding really isn’t commonly addressed in the school-based therapy realm because it’s not necessarily.
A barrier to accessing education. You can make the argument for it. Some people will cover that and do it, but most of the time they’re not gonna do feeding therapy in this setting. You can always do outpatient therapy for anything that the school doesn’t cover. Okay. Insurance supplies, we’ll talk about that later.
We’ve actually had a past episode on the difference between school-based and outpatient therapy. I would encourage you to listen to that as well. It’s really [00:26:00] helpful. So, Question one again was when will I get a copy of the evaluation report prior to the meeting? Okay. Number two is what categories might you be considering for qualification for my child?
There’s 13 different categories that children can qualify under through I D E A. They might know what categories they’re considering. So if you have an outside diagnosis of autism, they’re gonna say, yeah, we’re gonna look at autism.
But they typically have to look at at least two different categories to make sure that you know, they’re covering all their bases, right? Oh, we might have evidence for speech and language impairment. We might have some information for oi. If you have a medically complex kiddo, they might fall under o i.
You can find these checklists on your state’s website and if you have any, Any question about where to find any of these resources, especially for state resources, I want you to join the [00:27:00] Facebook group, because that’s the stuff that we talk about in that Facebook group.
Okay? The link for that is in the show notes as well. I want you to really, if you have any questions about this transition, if you want help locating resources for your state, that’s where to go to ask me those questions, and then it’s available for everybody else in the group as well. So, again, question number two was what categories might you be considering for qualification?
This gives you a heads up. It’s a checklist that you can look up beforehand and you can say, oh, okay, it looks like they might qualify for this, or, this sounds like my kid, or This doesn’t sound like my kid at all. And so you have some sort of knowledge going into that meeting of what the checklist is going to look like.
Okay. A lot of times they’re hard to read. All I’m saying is that it’s nice to have a heads up and to be familiar with what they’re gonna read. Okay. The third and final question is, if they qualify, will you do the IEP meeting right after the evaluation meeting? This gives you a heads up because if you want a separate [00:28:00] meeting, you can ask for a separate meeting.
You can come back and do the IEP later, or if you think that they’re gonna have a draft, i e p ready. Then you can ask for that too. They’re really not supposed to predetermine eligibility and have that i e P draft ready. But if you ask for it, they might give it to you or they might have one ready for you.
And it’s just really nice to see what’s on there so you can make sure, again, that all of your concerns are addressed. That can be addressed, that you have questions ready, because it’s really hard to just look at a document that’s very foreign and. Come up with questions like you’re still getting oriented at that point, you’re not gonna have good questions.
So if you have a heads up, if they’re going to continue with the IEP right after, if they qualify, or if they do it in a separate meeting, that’s great too. So you just have a heads up about what the process looks like, because every team does it differently and every district does it differently as well.
So [00:29:00] those are your three questions. When, when will I get a copy of the evaluation report? Prior to the meeting, what categories might you be considering for qualification? And if they qualify, will you do the IEP meeting right after the evaluation meeting? Okay. I hope that really helps. Like I said, if you have any questions about this early intervention to school-based therapy transition, if you need help locating resources, join the free Facebook group.
The link is at the show notes. As always, thank you so much for spending time with me. I hope that you join the Facebook group so I can help you out if you’re going to go through this transition, especially over the summer.
And also if you found this episode helpful, I would love it if you would share it with somebody. That might benefit from this information as well. Thank you for spending time with me. I will see you same time, same place next week, and of course in the Facebook group. In the meantime, have a great week.