Other health impaired (OHI) or ED

[givnmegryhr]

The district psychologist called this morning. She wanted to go over a few things to let me know what was going on with the evaluation. for the IEP. The first meeting is next Wed. I am fortunate that the Behavioral Specialist from wraparound services will be attending with us. The psychiatric said they want to put him in the ED category, but she said we can talk about it. I have read that we should shoot for OHI. What if he can't get special services without the ED label? I am wondering how to handle this. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Martie]

IF a child has a qualifiable disability and there is a negative educational impact, the SAME services should be available on an individual basis regardless of label. Services are delivered to children not categories.

That said, many parents feel the ED label is stimatizing or that it means their child will be sent to an alternative school. I can not tell people how to feel but my child was labeled ED because it never occurred to me that he was anything else (in other words, I did not make the case that major depression is a MEDICAL disorder that affected his health--even though he tool prescription medications for it and he therefore was "health impaired."

I guess you can make that argument, but whichever way it comes out, the services should be individualized under an IEP.

What is ILLEGAL and may happen is they will say he can have an IEP under ED but a 504 under OHI. Since the difference between them has to do with the requirement for there to be sufficient negative educational impact to qualify for an IEP, the above would make no sense. There is either negative educational impact or not--period.

I hope your wraparound specialist knows the law.

Martie

 

[dreamer]

try here
http://www.thebalancedmind.org/learn/library/the-idea-classification-debate-ed-or-ohi

 

[givnmegryhr]

Fabulous article ! Thank you! I have e-mailed it to the school psychologist and made several copies to take to the IEP. You Rock!!!

 

[wincha]

I would like to question further about generalized anxiety disorder. The psychologist made mention that the IEP label would be ED if gets an IEP. They are also doing testing for Learning Disability (LD)'s. My daughter has problems with written expression she is doing better if it is a subject related topic but if it is personal or what she thinks about what she has read she either doesn't do it or when pressed shuts down. She says she feels tired and her brain says to write but her hand can't. I need to come up with an argument for OHI she needs to have a Special Education teacher work with her on her writing assignments. She is more than capable. Since moving to the public school from Catholic her handwriting is very nice and used to be very sloppy. It was an effort to do written work at all before. She is making progress no IEP yet just testing. Beginning of school all were notified of her Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) but still the teacher pushed her and she shut down and sent her to the principals office to do work that she wouldnt' do so we requested an evaluation. The lastest is that no mention on her progress report of not doing her reading response journal. No mention in my weekly to biweekly phone calls. No mention of an incident where she wrote a personal paper wouldn';t show it to the teacher and went in the bathroom for 30 minutes. I could have had her therapist talk to her about it. I found out weeks later. About the reading response journal found out at teachers conferences in which her grade was a C because she failed her in 2 areas of reading for not doing the reading response journal. No attempt to test her reading ability in any other way, no reading specialist brought in(they have them at the school NOT Special Education) she is being testing now for Special Education. Husband is following up on this one.
Any suggestions?