taking a lawyer to the IEP meeting...good idea?

[mylittleone]

hi,

my brother and my sister in law are in consultations with a lawyer about the FIRST IEP meeting with the school district here in Los ANgeles.

my niece has already been assessed/diagnosed, this is the meeting is to hatch out a Individual Education Plan.

We want to get the maximum benefits for our child and that why we want to make sure we understand everything....would taking a lawyer be helpful or would it frighten the district officials?

is it a good idea to take the lawyer with us?

please let me know. the meeting is on August 10th 2005.

thank you!
Varun

[Lisa S]

Hi Varun,
I have waited so long to answer your question because it is such a difficult one to answer correctly. Things might be different in LA than they are in Colorado, but here, there is a degree of intimidation of school personnel involved if parents bring an attorney to their IEP meeting. On the other hand, the school district officials will be careful to stay on the correct side of the law with the parents if there is an attorney in the room.

Is the attorney a specialist in special education law? What does the attorney think about the school situation in Los Angeles? Does he or she think it would be helpful to attend the IEP meeting? Is there a local chapter of a parent's group for autistic children? The parents there might know more about the local situation. I found a couple of websites that might be helpful:

The Autism Society of America Los Angeles Chapter:

http://www.asalosangeles.org/

The North Los Angeles County Regional Center lists some support groups in the area:

http://www.nlacrc.com/community_support2.html

I hope some of this information helps. What my husband and I did, which might not apply at all to your situation, was we hired the best special education attorney in the state and he attended our daughter's IEP meetings with us, but only after the school district tried to move our daughter to a placement that would be inappropriate for her. At that point, we didn't care about intimidating them because they had already tried to do something to our daughter we thought was wrong. Our attorney also spent a lot of time on the telephone negotiating on our behalf with the executive director of special education of our school district.

In hindsight, perhaps a more proactive approach like the one you are following would have been better. Whatever you decide, please let us know how the meeting goes, OK?

Lisa

[mylittleone]

hi,

My niece had the neurologist appointment yesterday, he says there are chances that she would recover if we are persistent with her.

he said:

20 hrs a week of at-home ABA REQUIRED.
BUT 30 hrs a week of at-home ABA highly recommended.

I want 40 hrs for her or whatever an expert would recommend to start with. I don't want to have just the minimum, I want whatever it takes to get her to recover.

I am hoping the school district will atleast foot the bill for 30 hrs and we would arrange the rest of it.

I just wished there was a faster way to get this going. its already almost 3 weeks now.
she did do a flyin kiss to me when I asked her this morning...I taught her that last week.:)

will let you know about the lawyer situation and the FIRST IEP meeting.

Varun

[Lisa S]

Varun,
30-40 hours of ABA a week is a lot of ABA. If I had to guess, the school district will want to pay for no ABA or very little ABA, so maybe going in strong with a special education attorney is your best approach. Also very important is lining up specialist's recommendations like you are doing. The neurologist says your niece needs at least 20 hours of ABA a week and 30 hours would be highly recommended. Did the neurologist write a letter stating these conclusions so you can use it in the IEP meeting?

Your niece sounds like such a sweetie! She learned flying kisses very quickly, didn't she? Three weeks seems like a lot of time to do nothing, but you are doing lots of things to help her right now.
Lisa

[mylittleone]

hi,

on August 10th had our first IEP meeting. meeting went perfect.

People present at the meeting:
1) school psychologist
2) school OT (occupational therapist)
3) school speech therapist
4) school incharge of the program + an other helper
5) myself,
6) my sister in-law,
7) our lawyer,
8) harbor regional person - who provide for under 3 yrs age programs,
9) person from private company who started 15 hrs ABA 2 days ago. she was there with her assesment and goals.
10) on the phone was the teacher/admin from the (useless for my niece) speech classes she went to.

we had the Neurologist's report and the other diagnosis report with us as well.

we got 30 hrs per week (home-based) of ABA approved by the lausd people + 2 hrs OT at the clinic + 2 hrs speech therapy at-home.

Following is what lawyer did for us:
* He kept everyone focused and on track.
* He declared before hand that we were looking for home-based ABA.
* He explained and asked the right questions.

I would HIGHLY recommend taking an experienced lawyer to these meetings.

the school people had NO problems at all with the lawyer, they actualy welcomed him there.

thats all.
Varun

[Lisa S]

That's great, Varun. I'm happy the meeting went so well for you. It looks like the money for the lawyer was well-spent.
Lisa

[ACHELLEI]

What type of school are you trying to get your three old child in? I was just curious b/c we are considering trying to get our almost three year old into a school there is one out here in MD run by the Maryland Infants and Toddler program (for the early intervention of children with disabilites). It is geared towards kids like mine (SI dysf.) with three or four "peers" who are typically developed. It is supposed to be a really good program from what I have been able to discover...but I would like to know if there are other options out there. It seems that most preschools aren't equipped to handle a child like mine. But is that what you are trying to do?