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Friday, October 1, 2010

Young children in school settings in US

This is where you can read and comment on the work of Molly, Becky, Megan,  Ninfa and Miri

14 comments:

  1. Getting to Know Your Agency
    By Megan Anenen, Mollie Eliasof, Miri Hallali, & Ninfa Uribe
    In the public school system, there are often individuals who require extra assistance from school faculty and programs to learn and thrive. In some instances, individuals have needs that cannot be met through the public school system alone and require the assistance of outside programs. Our group’s focus for this assignment aims to explore the programs offered by Chicago’s public school system as well as popular programs meant to address the needs of children in both the US and Lithuania. We will discuss the Chicago Public School System, a Therapeutic Day School offered through Jewish Child and Family Services, as well as a Children’s Telephone program offered in Lithuania.

    Chicago Public Schools
    Office of Specialized Services & Office of Special Education and Supports

    Chicago Public Schools is a school system in the city of Chicago, Illinois that educates all children from ages 3-18 in a public school setting. This system is based within Chicago city limits only. Most schools are residential, meaning that the population that attends a particular school is required to live within certain boundaries surrounding each school. Chicago Public Schools employs social workers that are hired in two ways. Social workers can by hired by the Board of Education and placed at a particular school or schools and social workers can also be hired by an individual school that uses budget monies to pay the salary of the social worker that comes in to provide services for the students. The majority of the case load that social workers encounter is the special education populations that have IEPs (individualized education program).

    Our Mission: The mission of the Office of Special Education and Supports (OSES) is to work collaboratively with schools, students, parents and other external stakeholders to provide the tools, guidance, supports and services necessary to ensure the success of all students with disabilities.

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  2. Vision: OSES will be a leader in effective special education practices and valued
    partner for schools, parents, students and community agencies.
    Values
    We believe: All students belong
    We believe in:
    • High Expectations
    • Integrity
    • Diversity
    • Open Communications
    • Accountability
    Programs & Services
    The Office of Special Education and Supports offers a variety of programs and services to all children. Information about programs, services and references are included in the OSES procedural manual. The manual includes: Interventions process, referral and evaluation, IEP overview, explanation of processes forms and more.
    Below is an example of two major programs offered to the public school’s population.

    1. A school-based program service intervention process
    2. Parent and educator partnership
    A school-based program service intervention process
    School-based problem solving (SBPS) is the intervention process that is a required component of the Corey H. Settlement Agreement (1997). This agreement requires that the Chicago Public Schools implement a school-based intervention process. This process must be implemented at each elementary school.
    Goals
    The SBPS process is not a single event, but a process that is built into the CPS educational program. Activities are conducted in the classroom by staff working in the problem-solving delivery system. These activities include:
    • Assessing student performance using classroom-based materials
    • Establishing and deliver intervention in the classroom
    • Translating effective teaching strategies into the regular instruction program
    • Consulting to guide the "fine tuning" of classroom strategies
    • Involving teachers, parents, and key personnel in collaborative decision making
    The school- based problem solving is a process that involves many professionals, programs and
    Services.

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  3. Social Work Services
    Social workers are assigned to each school to facilitate provision of counseling services using individual, family and group methodologies; help students develop coping strategies; increase self-esteem and improve interactive skills; facilitate environmental changes to support the implementation of appropriate educational services; and provide consultation services to faculty, parents and others, regarding socio-cultural and emotional factors.
    The main focus for school social workers are students that are in special education programs within the school. These students can be referred by teachers or by parents. Before a child is placed in special education program, a problem must be presented. Students who are below their grade level in academics or those who display behavioral or emotional problems that affect their learning or the learning of others in a classroom are of concern. Before children are put in special education programs a process known as RTI (Response to Intervention) is implemented. According to Kelly (2008), RTI is intended to be an early-intervention approach to help remove barriers to learning for students before they are referred for traditional special education assessment and services. Only 31 U.S. states have a state certification process for school social workers working in a school, and many states don’t require master’s-level training for school social workers to work in a school. Internationally, of the 40 countries that have school social work, only Finland and China require a Master of Social Work (MSW) to practice in a school. (p. 7, 2008)
    Once a child is placed into special education, it is determined what type of specialized services is needed. If social work services are needed for the student, they are assigned a plan that requires a minimum number of minutes a week that the student is to meet with the social worker. A Chicago School Social Worker is required to document the minutes and notes in order to be in compliance with the IEP and special education regulations
    Benefit Through the SBPS process, schools are able to provide preventive, intervention services to students to address their academic/behavioral needs. SBPS is built on the belief that every child is capable of learning and that support should be available to both the student and teacher in strengthening specific curriculum areas and directly aligning instructional materials with expected outcomes.

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  4. This is a process that is based upon the elements of effective problem solving. It utilizes curriculum-based assessment, behavior observation, functional analysis of behavior and student progress monitoring as tools in the process.
    Parent and educator partnership-PEP (Support for Parents)
    CPS offers support for parents of students with disabilities to address questions and concerns regarding your child's Individualized Education Program (IEP). In partnership with local school district personnel, the Parent and Educator Partnership (PEP) Program empowers and supports both educators and parents of children with disabilities to effectively navigate the educational system. The PEP Program provides an array of workshop and conferences also open to educators and parents of students with disabilities.
    Goals - Our goal is to enhance caregivers' ability to participate actively in their child's education. It is believed that such participation will help ensure that students with disabilities receive a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment.
    Funding
    Chicago Public Schools and the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) co-sponsor the PEP Program and collaborate with community organizations to establish and ensure appropriate services for students with disabilities.

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  5. Jewish Child and Family Services
    Jewish Child and Family Services’ mission as a whole is to provide help, healing, and caring services to strengthen lives in the community. One of their programs, the JCFS Therapeutic Day School, aims to meet this goal by providing an atmosphere designed to meet the needs of students with behavioral and emotional disorders and help alleviate these behaviors.
    The services specifically offered by the JCFS Therapeutic Day School are individual and group therapy as well as individual and group special education services. The program offers a wide variety of education and behavioral specialists and a low student to teacher ratio that allows for Individualized Education Plans (IEPs).
    IEPs are learning plans that are tailored to meet the individual needs of children. Parents, educators, social workers, and students can work together to create an individualized plan for learning that includes special support that the child may need and goals that they set throughout the year in terms of their education. However, IEPs are just one of the ways that the JCFS Therapeutic Day School evaluates its services and ability to assist students in meeting their predetermined goals.
    Outcome evaluations are another way that the JCFS Therapeutic Day School evaluates its services. To be completed by students and their clinicians, these forms provide a well rounded look at the effectiveness of services by exploring student’s hobbies, involvement in extra curricular activities, jobs, social behavior, performance in academics, self-esteem and beliefs about themselves. By gaining feedback from both student and clinician through these evaluations, the program is better able to determine effectiveness of services.

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  6. In efforts to further evaluate their services, JCFS gathers the information from the outcome measures and the IEPs to create a statistical overview, which becomes accessible agency wide. As a result, two important documents develop from this internal form of research, the Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) Report and the Utilization Review (UR).
    The CQI Report provides an overall review of four of the program’s main components: personnel turnover, incident reporting, client satisfaction and evaluation, and the Utilization Review. In order to evaluate employee satisfaction and gauge the amount of change the students are experiencing in their relationships and support systems, the CQI Report not only monitors employee turnover, but also notes the amount of new hires. Under incident reporting, the CQI Report studies how often physical restraints were used and how often time outs and suspensions were distributed. The client satisfaction compares past and present responses of parents and their children in their Client Satisfaction Surveys. Lastly, the UR looks at a small, random selection of individual cases, in order to track the clinicians’ compliance with the documentation requirements. To continually progress and improve its services, JCFS Therapeutic Day School has also developed the CQI Committee, which contains one representative from every discipline within the program. The committee continuously meets to review the CQI Report and find ways to implement change in areas of the program that need improvement.
    The primary source of funding for JCFS Therapeutic Day School is from the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). For each student that CPS sends to JCFS Therapeutic Day School, it pays the program approximately forty thousand dollars to provide a comprehensive education for students who need more attention than public schools can offer. Since around eighty-five percent of the seats at JCFS Therapeutic Day School are filled by students that CPS sponsors, CPS is the main source of the program’s funding. The remainder of the revenue comes from the suburban districts.

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  7. References
    Chicago Public Schools. (n.d.). Office of Special Education and Supports. Retrieved September 24, 2010, from Chicago Public Schools: http://www.cps.edu/Programs/Pathways_to_success/SpecialEducationandSupports/Pages/ OfficeofSpecialEducationandSupports.aspx

    Kelly, M. S. (2008). The domains and demands of school social work practice: A guide to
    working effectively with students, families, and schools. New York: Oxford University Press.

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  8. I thought it was interesting how a major component of this service is the parent-educator partnership. I wonder how often that is taking place the way it should be? Obviously, this would be the best solution to provide a child with the necessary tools and services to meet their educational goals. However, at least in the field I'm working in, it is not always the case that this partnership is working. Many times I hear parents complaining that their child needs help, but the school just isn't providing what they need. Other times I hear frustrated educators dealing with parents that aren't partnering at home with the child to help them succeed at school. I wonder what the key is to bridge this gap, and if there are ever studies done to address it?

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  9. Thank you so much for the through overview of the schools system. I confess never having worked in an education setting a lot of the terms (IEP, RTI, etc.) were always lost on me, so I appreciate the explanation. Likewise I didn’t know the referral process for services within the school setting. It’s interesting to me that a parent or a teacher can request support services. Are there ever moments when that brings about conflict if one of the two parties disagree? I also noticed so much of this structure is built on collaborative thinking, which I’ve found, can sometimes prove quite difficult. I wonder how often the school social worker serves as a bridge between parties?

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  10. You are both bringing up excellent questions, which are issues that I see play out almost daily at JCFS Therapeutic Day School. Between the teacher's, parent's, and student's perspective of what supports are needed and what improvements could be made, there is absolutely conflict. To provide moments for collaborative discussion about these disagreements, all members involved in the youth's education process should technically be present at the youth's yearly IEP meeting, which allows this collective to decide on changes to the legal document that lists all supports to be given to the student.

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  11. In regards to the gap between parents and educators, this is an issue I see in my placement as well. In regards to conflict over services, I have found that parents ultimately hold the power (at least when the children are minors). We are able to meet with them a total of five times without parental consent, and some workers aren't even comfortable with that number. So essentially, if a parent does not wish for their child to be in therapy, they can refuse consent and there is little else that can be done. In this case, it might be beneficial to hold a meeting between the parent(s) and teacher to discuss services, but again, this depends on the parents willingness to participate. As Mollie mentioned, some if this is addressed during IEP meetings, in which parent or guardian presence is not technically optional.

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  12. I find all of this very interesting. I have very minimal experience working with children. I'm not sure if I misunderstood this or not, but I find it interesting that the technical school social worker's primary task is to assist the child with developmental needs and/or a disability in the education process. For all other severe needs (emotional and psychological), a different social worker is introduced to the school system via another organization. I suppose I did not realize the different roles that the social worker can have within the school system. I also thought that it was very important that part of the evaluation process involved examining the turnover rate of the social worker or staff members within the program. This is fascinating and I'm sure it would be helpful for many other organizations to explore this factor in the evaluation process.

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  13. Reading about your assessment of the CPS programs for special needs children was very interesting. I have a brother with Down syndrome who has been a part of the CPS system for at least five years. I hear the frustrations my parents face on a daily basis that due to budgetary constraints, my brother cannot, and will not, receive the needs (occupational therapy, speech therapy...) that he desperately needs. My parents are in constant meetings with the school, and their hands are tied and cannot help past what they are already doing. A school social worker was just assigned to his case, which I hope will help alleviate some of the stress my parents face, and help my brother succeed and grow developmentally. I just find it disheartening that with all the budgeting crisis that the state of Illinois, and Chicago in particular is going through, most financial cutbacks have been directed at special needs programs in schools. Are these children any less important than other "normal" children?

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  14. Chani thank you for sharing from personal experience. I agree with the above statements. I am not currently in a school placement, but have taken the CIEP course and I am also taking Group Work in Schools. It is pretty difficult when teachers and parents cannot come to an agreement about what is best for a child. Each person involved views the case from a different standpoint; it doesn't mean that one way of thinking is necessarily better than the other. However, I think that sometimes the parties involved get so caught up in proving why their way of thinking is right that they lose focus of what's important. It' crucial for people involved in the educational process to attend IEP meetings to discuss ways that each person could help support the student. While they may not always agree, each person should be able to openly express their concerns and colloborate with others on behalf of the student.

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