Special Needs Advocacy Book for Parents and Professionals
Michelle Davis and Rich Weinfeld, extremely experienced education consultants and special needs advocates, with compassion, discipline, and street smarts, offer you The Special Needs Advocacy Resource Book: What You Can Do Now to Advocate for Your Exceptional Child's Education (Prufrock Press, 2008) available at Amazon. This handbook guides parents through the educational, legal, and social mazes of involved in getting your child the special education services he or she needs and deserves.
From IEPs and 504 Plans, to IDEA and NCLB, navigating today's school system can be difficult for even the most savvy parent. The Advocacy Resource book provides parents and professional advocates with concise, easy-to-understand definitions and descriptions of legal terms and school regulations, along with checklists, tips, questionnaires, and other tools. You will also learn about psychoeducational assessments and educational testing which make sense -- or don't -- for your child.
As a parent of a special needs child who can and will do so many things well, you probably throw your hands up in despair when dealing with bureaucracy, convoluted rules, and counter-intuitive strategies that are sometimes suggested to you. You need to know your rights, your most sensible strategies, and your technical definitions to master the system and get your child what she needs.
Parent Advocate Skills You Will Learn:
- Assembling your child's educational history: documents, forms, etc.
- How to navigate school meetings
- Understanding education law and how it applies to your child's situation
- What practices work best for a special needs child in the classrom
- Working effectively with other parents and school systems
- Non-standard education options that might work best for your child