Requesting 1:1 Aide From School in IEP

honeyloveca

My son is 7yrs old, non-verbal & autistic.  From pre-school thru Special Ed 1st grade he's had a 1:1 aide as he had difficulties with attention in class, transitioning and has noncompliance behaviors.  He also has a behavior plan for dropping to the floor and staying dead weight on the floor for long periods of time. Throughout the years, he has been improving, his dropping behavior went from 45mins being the longest on the floor to 2mins to 45sec on an average 3-6 times a day and so in the beginning of this year they modified his IEP to eliminate the wording of individual ABA aide to

 "X will participate in a ABA classroom with trained staff all day long and is working with a variety of trained adults to increase independence and generalize skills to multiple adults." 

They said this will help fade out the 1:1 aide but will still have the aide support, only if needed.  My son is now in 2nd grade with a new teacher, new aides and new classroom.  It's been 2 months and already demonstrating excessive behaviors to escape/avoid activities in the classroom and dropping behaviors transitioning to speech, OT & APE classes.  His dropping has increased more than 6 times a day and up to an hour on the floor. It is to the point where it is impeding his education. 

I requested an IEP to implement back a 1:1 aide - the school district director of special ed indicated they will need to take data on his behaviors and how it is impeding his education for the next 3-4 weeks in order to make a decision to grantmy request or not.

Although, I feel pretty confident that my son will exhibit escape/avoiding behaviors when they do start observing but how will I know what fits their criteria to grant the 1:1 aide request....does anyone have any tips or suggestions?

Also, just a side note my son is getting a 1:1 aide for outdoor breaks and recess for safety/elopement purposes only.

TIA   

honeyloveca

The school indicated they will revist the FBA and take data of his escape/avoid/dropping behaviors for the next 3-4wks.  As far as considerable adult coverage, I am not really relying on that reasoning only because the first month of school they just had the teacher and 3 aides for 10 kids and then somedays there were only 2 aides and somedays 5 aides. Also if I were to move to a different town or state that doesnt have enough adult coverage, then I am kinda back on the same issue.  So I want to make sure it is implemented for the 1:1 in our IEP.

However, I will definitely look into having our in-home BCBA come and observe. And No he doesn't take any medications.

honeyloveca

Thank U -auntie- I knew going into this request will be a tough one to ask...trying to get as much info as I can, as I am still learning as he grows ... but I also want to know that I have tried and will continue to try to get what I feel is best for my kiddo.  

teedaalee

Hang in there! Praying things go well for you.

teedaalee0712

honeyloveca

VERY DELAYED UPDATE {sorry}:  Just wanted to post my success and what I did in having the school approve back a 1:1 aide for my son.  It was a very long process...as indicated in my original post the school required "they" take data on his behaviors for a month.  In that case, I took my own data.  I requested to observe my son in his classroom, but with me not visible to him.  So I was hiding behind furnitures in the class or outside viewing in the window to the class.  I took a 30mins data, where I would write exactly what he was doing and for every minute if he was complying or attending to the work or not.  I was allowed to observe once a week and at different times of the day.  A week before the follow-up IEP I requested to have the data that the school took.  I then graphed what they took and graphed what I took.  By graphing, it would have them visually see his behaviors. In comparison with the school's data and mine - the graph showed that my son was more compliant when he was on breaks and sing-song time with the class. The graph also showed more escape/avoidance behavior when it came to doing class work (writing and etc).  Well, that presentation worked when it came to the follow-up IEP.