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April 1995 |
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April 1995 |
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Leslie Margolis and
Walt McQuie
Maryland Dissability Law Center
An automobile accident transformed the lives of Adah and her family. She incurred a serious spinal cord injury and now has no use of the muscles below her neck. Adah can still speak and read, but she cannot write a school paper or turn the pages of a book. Her parents have had to engineer their work lives around the need to maintain insurance coverage for Adah and arrange their schedules so that they have the time to attend to her personal needs and transport her to and from school. They have had to learn about hiring nurses, purchasing specialized equipment and demanding satisfaction from insurance companies and school officials. They have reluctantly become advocates and have discovered the limits of their advocacy abilities.
When parents request assistive technology services and devices from their local school systems, they can face a variety of responses:..."there's no money in the budget"..."we can't accept an outside evaluation; our speech therapist will have to re-evaluate your child"..."we can provide this devise at school, but it can't be used at home." Adah's father found school staff initially responsive. They agreed to purchase a computer and the specialized hardware and software that allows Adah to use it. But Adah cannot use it to take notes in her classes because it is not portable. She cannot accompany her classmates when they go to the computer lab, because her computer is kept in a resource room. It took a long time to acquire and set up the equipment. The district has dozens of schools but only one "expert" on computerized assistive technology devices and the family wonders if school staff are making full use of the available technology that could help Adah. When Adah's father requested a computer for their home, the team agreed that Adah needed this so that she could complete her homework assignments just like her classmates instead of dictating responses to her parents. However, the school board delayed its decision on funding for several months and then denied the request saying Adah would be allowed sufficient time out of her classes to do her homework at school.
MD TAP has entered into a partnership with the Maryland Disability Law Center (MDLC) to assist families who face these sorts of problems with their local school systems. One of MD TAP's statutory priorities is the "development and implementation of strategies to ensure timely acquisition and delivery of assistive technology devices and assistive services, particularly for children". To achieve this goal MD TAP is contracting with MDLC to provide legal representation for individuals with disabilities who, although eligible, have been denied access to assistive technology devices or services.
MDLC has a long history of advocating for the provision of appropriate special education and related services to children with disabilities in their neighborhood schools. In previous cases MDLC has successfully responded to slow decision-making, decisions by administrators based on funding rather than by teams based on the individual child's needs, refusals to provide needed services outside of resource rooms or outside of the normal school day and year, and many other issues. Our new partnership with MD TAP will allow us to incorporate this individual case advocacy into a broader strategy to make local school systems more responsive to the needs of children who require assistive technology to be successful in school. To this end each agency will provide technical assistance and training to the other in our respective areas of specialty and we will provide training on the requirements of the special education laws and processes concerning assistive technology devices and services. This training will be made available to families, local school staff, and other agencies that provide service and support to individuals with disabilities based on specific requests for assistance and in response to the identification of systemic issues by our respective staff.
Additional questions about the partnership between MD TAP and the MDLC can be addressed to Paul Rasinski, MD TAP Education Liaison at 800 TECH-TAP.
Central and Western Maryland 410-235-4700 - 800-233-7201 TDD 410-235-4227 10:00 am to 12:00 noon Monday through Friday Southern Maryland 301-925-9871 - 800-870-6362 ,TDD 301-925-9874 9:00 am to 5:00 pm Monday through Friday Eastern Shore 410-228-3810 - 800-445-6038 TDD 410-228-3813 9:00 am to 4:00 pm Monday through Friday.
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