E97: Orientation & Mobility [IEP Team BONUS Series]
If your child has a visual impairment or is blind, this episode explains the qualifications and job responsibilities of an Orientation & Mobility Specialist, or O&M!
If your child has a visual impairment or is blind, this episode explains the qualifications and job responsibilities of an Orientation & Mobility Specialist, or O&M!
In this episode we cover:
1) What is Orientation & Mobility Specialist (O&M)
2) Qualifications
3) What they actually do to help your child access their education
4) Possible overlap with Teacher of Visually Impaired (TVI)
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E97: O&M
[00:00:00] Welcome to this week’s IEP team bonus series episode. And if you have a child that is blind or has low vision, then you may or may not have heard of orientation and mobility. This is what we’re focusing on today to talk about what an ONM specialist does and what their qualifications are and what they actually do for your child to access their education in the school environment. So stick with me, we’re talking about orientation and mobility today.
You are listening to the parent IEP lab, the podcast that helps you get an effective IEP plan for your child so that you can get them supported and learning in school. I’m Beth LEAs and Feld occupational therapist, who started to notice trends in parents who got effective IEP for their kids without having to fight the school. My mission is to help you turn insider knowledge from the school side into effective parent advocacy for your child. The parent IEP lab focuses on preparing you for an upcoming IEP meeting, but also talks about commonly missed opportunities for parents to get an effective IEP outside of the IEP meeting as well. [00:01:00]
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.
You know, I spent some time over the holiday season, updating my website and just making sure that everything is updated. So if you haven’t been to the IUP lab.com lately, you might want to check it out and front and center on the homepage of that website. Is a link to get your IEP process step-by-step guide. This is a guide. But breaks down the annual review process into 10 steps, including what you should share for your parent input. And when you should share in order to feel like you are heard and seen in your next IEP meeting. So go ahead and go to the IEP lab.com and you can click on the second graphic on that page to download, or you can just click the link below this podcast in your podcast player. Now let’s get into the episode
Okay, so welcome to this week’s episode of the IEP team bonus series. And if [00:02:00] you’re new to the bonus series, if you scroll back in your podcast player, you will see that we are hitting on every possible team member that you can have on your IEP team. And we’re going into the qualifications they have, because I’ve gotten a lot of questions lately. About like special education teachers or therapists. ’cause I think this year, especially we’re having some staffing shortages. And so in past episodes, especially in the special education teacher episode, we talk about like emergency situations and how could they can get a temporary license through the state and things like that. So we’re really diving into this because it also helps you as a parent, know who to ask for. Right.
There’s a lot of people that are like, wait, physical therapy is a thing that schools can provide. It is. But you need to know what they actually do in the school setting because a lot of us staff members overlap with each other. So. It also can help you if you’re like, well, my child has this specific need. I don’t know what service [00:03:00] would cover that. And so this just gives you context for what a team member actually does on that team. And even in the physical therapy episode, which was last week’s episode on Thursday.
You can see that they do a lot more than you would think a PT does in the school setting. So if you are wondering, you know, your case manager is a special education teacher or a speech language pathologist, we’ve covered a lot of those previously. And so today we are focusing on orientation and mobility.
This one is particularly interesting to me because I do have another fellow OT, who I went to OT school with in our master’s program. And he actually is going back to school again to get his own M certification. So this is really interesting for me to kind of dive in and see what are the qualifications actually in, what do they do? Because when I think of orientation and mobility, I think of teaching people how to use a cane, right.
To like navigate their environment. But as I’m going through this research, I’m like, oh my [00:04:00] gosh, they actually do more than that. I mean, it’s all about mobility obviously, but there’s a little bit more to it than that. So I’m excited to kind of dive in with you this week and really kind of discover this new profession that I really haven’t experienced a whole lot. I’ve worked alongside them in summer school, but I haven’t really worked directly with them on teams. So hopefully we can get an ONM provider.
On the podcast at some point to really delve into this and they can explain the day-to-day a little bit more, but for now we are going to go over the qualifications. And so I am reading off of the Colorado state regulation list for how they can qualify for a Colorado state license. It is going to be really, really similar in your state.
But if you have any questions about. You know, the qualifications or you know, where these people are in your state, we can help you research that if you happen to the Facebook group, and there’s a link to join the Facebook group below this podcast in your podcast player as well. So we’ll go over qualifications first and then we’re actually going to get into what they [00:05:00] actually do.
So let’s jump into qualifications. So the first one is that they have to have a bachelor’s or higher degree from a regionally accredited institution. The next one is completion of an approved preparation program from regionally accredited institution for school orientation and mobility specialists.
You can see a theme here because they’re all pretty much requiring that any person on the IEP team has to go to a regionally accredited institution. Right? And then the next one is completion of practicum or internship, which must be in a school setting and equivalent to a minimum of 320 hours. Full-time under the supervision of an academy of certification of vision rehabilitation and education professionals.
And that acronym is AC V. R E P licensed orientation and mobility specialist. Passage of the AC V R E P exam. And a valid a C V R E P orientation and [00:06:00] mobility certificate. So it all runs through that very large regulating body. Um, and so that’s how they get their qualifications to do so okay. So now that we’ve got the qualifications under the way, and again, if you have any questions about your particular state’s CRA qualifications, just jumping in the Facebook group, and we can find that site for you. It was really, really easy to find that Colorado regulations for that. Let’s go ahead and talk about what they actually do.
So this is cool, right? So I actually got this list from the AC V R E p.org. Website. And that makes sense, right? Because they’re the regulating body that we just talked about with all the qualifications. Right. So they have a list of what they do and also the body of knowledge and competencies.
That they look for in their scope of practice. So this is kind of taking a lot of the things from their list on their website. So I will go ahead and link this resource to the show notes so that, you know, I give credit where credit’s due and you can look up the full list if you want to, because I’m not going to touch on [00:07:00] every single thing on this list.
So the cool thing is, you know, I knew that they taught cane techniques, which is like that long cane that they use to tap on the ground and find obstacles and navigate their environment. Right. Again, this is for people who are blind, low vision, , they have peripheral vision
That is limiting their ability to function and kind of adding a safety concern component to that. And also people who have diseases that they know that their vision is going away. This O and M might step in to help as well. Although in the school setting, they’re very much in that evaluation, taking a picture of where their vision is right now.
So I’ve consulted with, I think one family where they were talking about their vision will disappear at some point. And so really these services are for people who are
Experiencing some sort of impact to their education, their access to their education right now. And then I imagine that for people who have a degenerative disease like that, that you [00:08:00] would be able to access outside services for this as well. So again, school setting, it has to impact their ability to access their education right now, as it is captured at the evaluation.
So A little bit concerning in a little bit frustrating. Right? We talk about this. Sometimes too, when we’re talking about people with muscular dystrophy and other degenerative diseases where it’s like, well, they don’t need an IEP right now, but they might need one in the future. And we’ve kind of.
Kind of blurred that line a little bit in a couple of cases that I’ve been involved in. So it kind of depends on your team when this happens, but. Again, you can hop into the Facebook group if you have any concerns about that, because I have some thoughts about how to structure ask, as far as that goes to,
truly ask for, um, the services that your child needs, right. And kind of be prepped and prepared and make your case. Right. Um, so the first thing that they do on this list, um, from this website is concept development, which includes body image, spacial, temporal, positional, directional, and environmental [00:09:00] concepts. And this is really interesting. I didn’t even think about this, that, if somebody says you need to turn to your right and you’re blind.
You need to know body concepts and like which way is right, which way is left, because that’s a safety issue now. Like you can’t see that. So you need to be able to internalize those environmental concepts, even if you can’t see them in order to access your environment. So that was something I did not think about.
And the next thing on the list is motor development. So including motor skills needed for balance posturing gate, as well as the use of adaptive devices and techniques to assist those with multiple disabilities. The interesting thing is, you know, when you. Um, I may be going off the deep end a little bit on this comment, but balance and vision are so related. And these two sensory systems, the inner ear, which regulates balance.
And the visual system actually linked together really, really strongly. As an OT, sometimes we will do [00:10:00] like spinning or vestibular work in order to increase the awareness of our balance and posture. So those are very, very, very related in the body. And so of course you would have to really work on the motor development piece if that’s a barrier to them getting around safely.
And so they also look at posture and gait as well as those adaptive devices and techniques. Um, for those with multiple disabilities. Um, they probably also have to consider if they’re in a wheelchair, how are they going to navigate? Right. There’s some things that compound, and maybe there’s somebody with multiple disabilities that has blindness, but also has.
You know, cerebral palsy or something else that limits their ability to move around on their two feet. And so this ONM specialist has to know about all of the different ways for somebody to be mobilized, right. And to get around in the environment that they need to. And the next bullet point is sensory development, which includes visual auditory, vestibular, kinesthetic, tactile olfactory, and proprioceptive senses and the inner [00:11:00] relationships of these systems. So this is also like, okay, so you have a little bit of vision left. Like how can we utilize that and use strategies to utilize the visual input that you do have, but also enhancing and really using strategies and teaching how to use those auditory cues.
And the other one that’s really interesting is the proprioceptive senses. And that’s where your body is in space. So we have little sensors inside of our joints. And those tell us exactly where we are in space. And so yes, of course you would need that component to be able to navigate your environment. Right.
Like I hinted at before the next one is residual vision stimulation and training, um, the human guide techniques. So now we’re getting into like some really technical things that make a lot of sense, upper and lower protective techniques locating, dropped objects, trailing squaring off.
So these are all kind of techniques that people use. Cane techniques, soliciting or declining assistance, following directions, utilizing landmarks, search patterns, again like strategies [00:12:00] to be able. To look for something, um, compass directions, route planning, analysis, and identification of intersections and traffic patterns, which would be super important.
Use of traffic control devices. Um, techniques for crossing streets, like all kinds of environmental and community mobility. Right? Problem solving. And the last one is instructional use of low vision devices. You might see a little bit of overlap between ONM, with those low vision devices.
Versus the teacher of the visually impaired, which is the
tVI. And so you might see a little bit of overlap, but they are typically two different people. As far as I have seen in the districts that I’ve worked for even smaller districts. The TVI is different from the ONM provider as well. So isn’t that really cool? Like, it goes a lot deeper than just like teaching how to use the cane. Right. You have a lot of safety in there. You also have, um, evaluating their learning style and teaching to that learning style. And they [00:13:00] also have to have that medical knowledge of the prognosis. Right.
Is there vision going to stay the same? Is it going to get worse? Um, what’s going on as far as that, and then also what I was assuming in my head, which is things like using a cane and those strategies for safety when they’re in the community as well. So this is a little bit of a shorter episode because it’s just straight into the point. Right? So if you have any questions about an ONM provider ONM services, especially if you are in a rural district, then go ahead and happen to the Facebook group.
The link for the Facebook group is in the show notes. So if you go to the IEP lab.com/podcast, you can see a link there to join the Facebook group, or you can find the link to join the Facebook group below this podcast in your podcast player, as well. Remember to check out the website, the IEP lab.com. Go ahead and download your guide. If you have an IEP meeting coming up and we also have a really special event coming up. I love, love doing live events with you guys.
It is so much fun. So we have a [00:14:00] live event coming up at the end of January. So January 27th to 29th. We’re doing a boot camp. So if you are one of those people that looks at your child’s IEP and has no idea, what’s actually in it, because it’s all confusing and jargon and it’s totally overwhelming, then this is the bootcamp for you. So we’re doing three days of a really short presentation to get you oriented.
And then also you can upgrade to a VIP ticket as well, so that you can get more personalized feedback on your individual child’s IEP as well. So it’s going to be really fun over a weekend. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And you actually get those recordings of those videos for life so you get a login and you get to revisit those as you get another draft iep in front of you and you’re like okay i don’t know what i’m looking at so you have all kinds of resources for that as well so i’m looking forward to that go ahead and register and there’s a link below this podcast in your podcast player to register for the bootcamp as well thank you so much for joining me and i will see you. same time same place next week thanks so [00:15:00] much