Making Special Education Actually Work

Click on the player below to listen to the podcast version of this article.

There are a number of states that have passed regulations that require insurance companies to fund services, including ABA programs, for their insureds who have autism. However, many insurance companies deny autism-related claims on a regular basis.

Insurance advocacy is an entirely different ballgame from special education and regional center advocacy and it’s too big of an undertaking for KPS4Parents to assume. However, other advocacy organizations exist to help families of children with autism pursue appropriate interventions such as ABA, speech-language services, and occupational therapy from their insurance carriers.

While we’ve never worked with any of these organizations, and thus cannot speak to the quality of their services, parents may still wish to check them out for themselves. The organizations we’ve identified that perform this type of advocacy and other parent resources on insurance coverage of autism services include:

• The Autism Health Insurance Project (California)
• Advocates for Autism of Massachusetts
• Autism Advocacy & Law Center (Minnesota)
• Autism Society of Ohio
• Gotham Government Communications & Relations (New York)
• Missouri Department of Insurance
• Elizabeth Birt Center for Autism Law & Advocacy (New York)
• Angelo & Di Monda (California)

There are also other resources out there for parents willing to take the time to search the internet and call around. The above-listed resources are just a few of many.

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Bridging Over to Life After K-12

Many states mandate that all middle schoolers formally explore career options. For students with special learning needs, maintaining high expectations is an important part of this process. Here are some tips on how to focus on strengths to achieve this end.

Conveying to middle school students the importance of career exploration is quite a trick to pull off successfully. Many states mandate that students, often in the 8th Grade, develop the first components of what will be a comprehensive career plan with implications for course selection. Making the realities many adults find daunting relevant to thirteen-year-olds is possible and this important milestone shouldn’t be overlooked as an integral part of the IEP process, particularly in light of transition requirements as teens on IEPs grow older.

An Eye on Transition

While not all states mandate career plans, all do have required transition plans for students being served under an IEP. With this in mind, combine any middle school exploration of careers into an integrated approach that will blend easily into the transition plan several years later.

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Pepsi® Refresh strongly encourages its applicants to submit videos in support of their applications. Voting ends on Monday, which is a pretty small window from the date we were advised that our proposal had made it to the voting stage to get very much done around all of our casework and other commitments. I’ve had to do some scrambling as the proposal for my master’s thesis had to be finished and turned in throughout this same period of time, as well.

Here is the video I was able to put together with the time and resources available to me. It’s hardly a work of art, but please appreciate the message.

If you’re wondering why I was leaning over a little and kind of looking up in some parts of it, my laptop was on the floor next to me and I was looking at it between segments to advance the slides of my script. I didn’t have anyone directing me to tell me that I was still leaned over a little at the beginning of some of the segments. My laptop was connected to our projector, which was projecting my script onto a cardboard display tri-fold opened out on a presentation easel to serve as a screen.

I created my own teleprompter of sorts with PowerPoint® and what I had immediately available. This was a last-minute DIY job if there ever was one; unfortunately, it was the best I could do under the circumstances. Also, thanks to a YouTube bug, the thumbnail image for the video is an awkward random freeze-frame and not what I selected. It will evidently take days for the issue to resolve itself and by that time, voting could be over, so please endure until it updates.

With this video, please forgive the lame and appreciate the effort. We greatly appreciate your votes on the Pepsi Refresh web site and via text messaging (text 110763 to 73774 - data rates may apply). See our dedicated Pepsi Refresh site at http://kps4parents.org/PepsiRefresh.