Three principles guide my practice:
When providing services to your child with special needs, time is of the essence. For each day that your child goes without necessary treatment, his or her needs compound and may get progressively more serious and more difficult to address over time. With early intervention, your child will have the best chances of succeeding academically in spite of any special needs.
I strongly believe that every parent, teacher, and provider truly wants the best for the children in their lives. Parents love their children, teachers love to teach children, and providers love helping children. It is my philosophy that we can work together as a team to create the most appropriate treatment and educational plan as expeditiously as possible. The sooner the plan is implemented, the more effective the plan will be – we will see results.
In order to develop an effective treatment plan, our team must be comprehensive – it must address all issues involved. Often times, the school will only focus on one behavior or developmental delay that affects the child or the class as a whole. As a result, the school will only evaluate the child for that specific problem. However, an apparent problem, behavior, or disability is merely a symptom of the bigger picture. For example, what seems to be ADHD may, in fact, be an auditory processing disorder. Failure to cooperate in class may be symptomatic of dyslexia. Without a complete evaluation, the real problem may never be discovered or be discovered too late to make any difference.
A comprehensive plan would involve a comprehensive assessment of the child. The team can then address all relevant issues that need to be incorporated into the child’s Individualized Education Plan. Failure to formulate a comprehensive treatment plan and IEP results in some issues going unresolved and compounding over time. This does a disservice to the child. A multi-disciplinary evaluation allows for the IEP team to create a thorough IEP, allowing the child to benefit from his or her curriculum required by the IDEA.