One important recent change to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires that early intervention services be provided to children and families to the “maximum extent appropriate” in the child’s “natural environment.” This requirement means that services should be provided at your home or a place familiar to your child rather than at a center. This reflects IDEA’s strong preference for inclusion, or placing disabled children in regular schools with their non-disabled peers.

IDEA recognizes that each child with a disability is unique. As a result, the law requires that your child’s special education program be tailored to his or her individual needs. Based on your child’s evaluation, a program designed specifically to address her developmental problems must be devised. This is called an individualized education program, or more commonly and IEP. The IEP is a written report that describes: your child’s current level of development; your child’s developmental strengths and needs; both the short-term and annual goals of the special education program; the specific educational services that your child will receive; the date services will start and their expected duration; standards for determining whether the goals of the educational programs are being met; the extent to which your child will participate in regular educational programs; the behavior intervention programs that will be used to enable your child to participate in regular education classrooms without impeding his or her or other student’s learning; your child’s communication needs; and parent concerns.

Under federal regulations, educational placements must be based on the IEP, not the other way around. In other words, the services your child receives and the setting in which he or she receives them should be determined by your child’s individual needs, not by the availability of existing programs.

A child’s IEP is usually developed during a series of meetings between parents, teachers, and other school district representatives. Your child may be present at these meetings if you feel so inclined as to bring them. School districts are required to establish committees to make these placement and program decisions. These committees are sometimes referred to as Child Study Teams or Administrative Placement Committees.

Writing an IEP is ideally a cooperative effort, with parents, teachers, therapists, and school officials conferring on what goals are appropriate and how best to achieve them. Because of IDEA’s emphasis on inclusion, regular education teachers are required to be on the IEP team. Preliminary drafts of the IEP are reviewed and revised in an attempt to develop a mutually acceptable educational program.

The importance of your role as parent in this process cannot be overemphasized. You cannot always depend on teachers or school officials to recognize your child’s unique needs. To obtain the full range of services, you may need to demonstrate that withholding certain services would result in an education that would not be “appropriate” (as IDEA has specified a child’s right to a “free appropriate public education”). For instance, if you want an academic-oriented program for your child, you must demonstrate that a program that only emphasizes vocational or functional skills is not appropriate given your child’s skills, abilities, and needs.

IEPs should be very detailed. You and your child’s teachers should set specific goals for every area of development, and specify how and when those goals will be reached. Although the thought of specific planning may seem intimidating at first, a detailed IEP enables you to closely monitor the education you child receives and to make sure he or she actually receives the services prescribed. In addition, the law requires that IEPs be reviewed at least once every year, and more often if necessary, to ensure your child’s educational program continues to meet her ever-changing needs.

Because your child has special needs, his or her IEP must be written with care to meet those needs. Unless you request specific services, they may be overlooked. You should made sure school officials recognize the unique needs of your child- the needs that make him or her different from other children with disabilities.

Before the IEP meeting, you should do some preparing by exploring available educational programs, including public, private, federal, state, county and municipal. Try attending some classes at your local mainstream school, and see if you think your child with cerebral palsy would benefit from attending school there. Also, before the meeting you should collect a complete set of developmental evaluations to share with school officials, and look over them yourself. And last, but most certainly not least, decide for yourself what short-term and long-term goals you think are appropriate for you child, and in what kind of program you think best suited for him or her. After you’ve made this decision, suggest it at your child’s IEP meeting.

To support placement in a particular type of program, you should collect “evidence” about your child’s special needs. Then, support your position that a particular type of placement is appropriate by presenting letters from physicians, psychologists, therapists (speech-language, physical, or occupational), teachers, developmental experts, or other professionals. This evidence may help to persuade a school district that the requested placement or services are the appropriate choices for your child.

When the time has come for your IEP meeting, do not attend it alone- bring a spouse, lawyer, advocate, physician, teacher or whomever you would like for support, including, of course, your child. While at the meeting, try to keep close track of everything the IEP team says, and take notes if possible, always get everything in writing and be assertive. Children with unique developmental challenges need parents to be assertive and persuasive advocates during the IEP process. This does not mean that school officials are always adversaries, but does mean that you are your child’s most important advocate, because you know him or her best.

Many years down the line, when your child has finished his or her educational career, it will be important for you as a parent to help you child to set up a career. In much the same way that an IEP is developed, and in much the same way that an IEP helps your child get the most out of his or her education, when your child is ready to enter the work force, he or she will no doubt benefit from an Individualized Habilitation Plan, or an IHP. The IHP sets forth the services needed to enable a person with a disability to work productively, as well as the services needed to live independently, if desired. For instance, if a personal assistant is required for a person with cerebral palsy to help with cooking meals, cleaning house and grooming so that he or she can live in the community, it should be included in the services prescribed by the IHP. Because the trend to include personal assistants in services is fairly new, however, public funding is still spotty. While it is improving, it is not guaranteed that your state covers it through Medicaid, as it is still optional for them to include it or not.