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IFSP question

oandmplus1oandmplus1 member
in Special Needs
We just moved to a new school district, and EI placed DD into what's called the Toddler Autism Evaluation Group due to a medical dx of ASD. We had to do new testing before doing our new IFSP. The PT and OT did the Peabody they said, and as we knew, DD is delayed in all areas (I haven't seen the SLP report yet). She is almost 3 and ranged from 8-9 months for fine motor, and 15-18 months for gross motor, and speech was 12 months for expressive and receptive language.
In their reports they mention her inappropriate use of toys (banging mostly), the difficulty they had engaging her, frequent need to stim, and also said she had sensory processing dysfunction.

They qualified her for services under developmental delays instead of ASD and I didn't think to ask why. I know an educational diagnosis is not always the same, but she seems to fit very well with the dx. Is it because developmental delays affect her more than ASD?
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Re: IFSP question

  • typesettypeset member
    In my state, they prefer the developmental delay category over ASD because ASD means they have to provide specialty services in EI and legally consider a number of things they otherwise would not when writing IEP.
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  • oandmplus1oandmplus1 member
    -auntie- said:

    Is this part of her transition to an IEP/school district services?


    A lot of districts prefer to use the DD classification where it exists for younger kids and fine tune it later as needed. They could label her under both. Labels can come and go. DS's IEP classification was Autism, in 4th when he bridged to public school full time, it was Autism/Specific LD. In 7th, his IEP was primarily around teaching executive function skills (ADHD) and writing- they added Speech/Language Impaired (expressive language delay) to justify additional help with theory of mind in reading fiction and to give him more writing support. For 9th, he had Autism and Specific LD and was down to just Autism the last 3 years.

    My guess is that given the overall degree of delay, that is the bigger impact at this time. Not all kids with ASD would present this way. You could ask- the classification shouldn't drive services, but sometimes labels do matter.
    They plan to do more evaluations prior to writing her IEP, so they said some of her goals may carry over, but some may get changed. I just want to make sure that I didn't need to fight to have both or if one was more beneficial than another, although I am very happy with the current amount of services they provided.
    I am planning on studying up more on IEPs over the next month since we will have our first IEP meeting soon too, I feel like I have a lot to learn to advocate for her.
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