Study Hall from School News Network
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Study Hall from School News Network
Young brains, big potential: From birth onward, special-ed services can make a lifetime of difference
Q: How early do special-education workers in Kent County begin helping children with special needs? A: From the time they’re born. As part two of our discussion about the possible closure of the U.S. Department of Education and its potential impacts on special education, Study Hall talks with Lindsey VanDyke, a coordinator of Kent ISD’s Early On program serving children from birth until age 3. Serving an average of 3,000 children per year, Early On works with parents to identify their child’s developmental delays or disabilities and refer them to special-ed services that will maximize their educational growth and success in school and life.
For more great stories about the changes and challenges of school districts in West Michigan, check out our website, School News Network.org. And if you have ideas for future programs, feel free to send them to us at SNN@kentisd.org. Thanks for listening, and happy studying!
Well, hello everyone and welcome to Study Hall from School News Network, your window into the public schools of Kent County, Michigan, and welcome to part two of our discussion about the possible closure of the US Department of Education and its potential impacts on special education services and students in Kent County. As we discussed in the previous episode of Study Hall, president Trump has vowed to close the US Department of Ed and turn over all education funding and oversight to the states. Newly appointed Secretary of Education, linda McMahon, endorses that goal and has proposed moving departmental functions to other federal agencies, but critics insist that relocating those functions would be detrimental to the coordination and enforcement of services provided by the Department of Education. With us today is Lindsay Van Dyke, a coordinator of Kent ISD's Early On program, to explain that program's services for very young children from ages 0 to 3 and the need for its continued support. Welcome to the conversation, lindsay.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:So tell me a little bit about how this program works, kinds of children and families you serve and what kind of services you provide.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so early on is Michigan's statewide early intervention program and we're operated through or we're federally mandated through Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities and Education Act. So Part C is the birth-to-three portion of IDEA. So early intervention is really a system of services and supports for families with children birth up to age 36 months or up to age 3 who are demonstrating a developmental delay or a disability. Our services are really embedded in a child's natural environment, so we are there to support the child where they are, so where our birth to three-year-olds most of them are at home or in child care or in the community. So all of our supports are provided right where they're at. So primarily through home visits or visits to child care. And we use a parent coaching approach. So we really view the parents as the child's first and best teacher and we want to build their confidence and capacity in supporting their child with a developmental delay or disability and our ultimate goal is to improve the developmental trajectory of those kids who have a developmental delay or disability.
Speaker 1:So could you potentially or do you, you know? Perhaps visit a home very soon after the child is born, because there's already been a disability identified?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. We receive referrals from a variety of sources, from parents, from physicians, from the NICU. So the neonatal intensive care unit those are primarily those babies who we see who are very, very young, are babies who have exited the NICU due to various medical needs or due to prematurity. They were born early and needed some extra medical support before going home. So we see babies as young as a month old. We've probably seen babies even younger than that. That can be a really overwhelming experience for the family and so we want to come in and be an additional support to them and help kind of guide them through the next steps and give them confidence in supporting their child.
Speaker 1:So, when you go to the home, what is it that you and your, what do you call them, the people that go to the homes, our early interventionists.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what do they do? Do they? You mentioned support to the parents, but obviously they have to do some work to kind of identify what this child's needs are. Right.
Speaker 2:So our initial visit with a family is an initial developmental evaluation and so it's where we gather a lot of information about where are the child's abilities at right now, both developmentally and medically, and what kind of supports does the family need. And within that initial developmental evaluation we develop what's called an individualized family service plan or an IFSP, different than an IEPEP, because we're taking that whole family into account and we know development is really interrelated when children are birthed to three years old. So in that initial developmental evaluation we come in and look at five different areas of development and kind of functioning and we get a snapshot of where the child is right now to help us determine are they eligible for early on Part C services. So there are three ways children can be found eligible for early on and that's what we're looking at in that first visit. That evaluation is very play-based. We ask the family a lot of questions, we watch how they interact with their child and collect kind of global developmental information. But those three ways that children can be found eligible for early on is if they have an established medical condition. So within the state of Michigan, early on at the state level has a list of medical conditions that we know put children at a higher risk of developing a delay. So if a child has one of those medical conditions they automatically qualify for early on services.
Speaker 2:Another way to be found eligible is a 20% delay in one area of development. So I keep talking about these areas of development. But the five areas we look at within early on are motor skills. So we're looking at their gross and fine motor skills, how they use their body to move. We're looking at communication skills, that's that speech and language development. We are looking at adaptive skills, which is the kind of their skills that they're developing things they can do for themselves. So how do they do with dressing, bathing, diaper changes at that really young age? We're looking at cognitive skills. And when we look at cognitive skills in that birth to three-year-old range, we're really looking at play skills and early problem solving. And then we also look at their social-emotional skills. So how are they interacting with peers and with the adults in their lives? So if we can establish that they have a 20% delay or more in one of those areas of development, that's another way to qualify for early on.
Speaker 2:The third way to qualify for early on is under the Michigan administration rules for special education. So, like Kirsten spoke about earlier, in Michigan we're considered a birth mandate state, meaning you can be found eligible for special education from birth up to 26. So that is something we take into account in that initial developmental evaluation is determining does this child demonstrate a disability and also show adverse functional impact? So when they're above three years old, we really look at educational impact. When you're under three years old, we're looking at functional impact in your daily routines. So how is your potential disability impacting how you interact with your world?
Speaker 1:That's such a comprehensive process that you're describing all the way from identifying these very particular traits in these very, very young children to dealing, I would think, with the parents and the difficulties they're having accepting what this is and also just kind of handling it right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's where we want to come in and really what happens when you go into a home is there's kind of this power differential and we really want to eliminate that. We come in as the professional per se, but really we want to empower the parents and remind them they are the expert on their child. We might know child development, but they are the expert. So how do we support them in better supporting their child's needs and those individual needs?
Speaker 1:About how many children are you talking about that are served, say, in a year? Yeah, about how many children are you talking about?
Speaker 2:that are served, say, in a year. Yeah, so our enrollment throughout the year. We have rolling enrollment, which means kids come and go all year round. Our program operates year round as well, so on average we have about 3,000 kids enrolled throughout the course of a program year, but our monthly average for enrollment is about 1,200 kids.
Speaker 1:Okay, and it takes you to all corners of Kent County, I'm sure right.
Speaker 2:So we support families who live in all of the 20 Kent ISD school districts those local districts.
Speaker 1:What would you say? The purpose is sort of the larger purpose is in intervening in these children's and families' lives so early, and how helpful is it in getting them the services and the support they need to not only do well in school but to just do well in life?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we know we want to improve that developmental trajectory of the kids enrolled in early on. But we also know that research tells us children's earliest experiences play a critical role in brain development. And we know from birth to three years old. That's when their brain is most flexible and there's a lot of neural connections happening in the brain that lead or provide that foundation for learning. So we want to intervene as early as we can so that outcomes are better later on, early as we can so that outcomes are better later on. The research about early intervention tells us because of brain development, the sooner we can support those needs, the better outcomes long term and which can help decrease costs for special education down the road.
Speaker 1:So by the time they're four, then what?
Speaker 2:So early on, that's a good question. Early on goes up until age 36 months or three years old Until three Okay.
Speaker 2:And within our program we are required to do what's called transition planning, which means we're talking with the family around two and a half years, when their child's two and a half years old, about what comes next after early on.
Speaker 2:And children exit for a variety of different reasons from early on and they exit to a variety of different settings. But our responsibility is to talk with families about what comes next. So some children, when they exit early on, they are developmentally on track and there's no further concerns and so they exit to whatever their environment might be. That might be home with their parents or in child care. We help support parents in finding preschool for their three-year-old if that's something that they're interested in for their three-year-old if that's something that they're interested in. Some children transition to other developmental supports through other home visiting programs that may continue to monitor the child's development. The other exit option for some of our kids is special education. So some of our kids will need to go on and continue to receive special education supports and we help that. Our early on team supports that process in transitioning from an IFSP to an IEP with their local school district.
Speaker 1:So once they turn three they can get that IEP sort of diagnosis right In terms of what their educational needs are. I don't mean a medical diagnosis their eligibility is determined again.
Speaker 2:So, we can determine if they're special education eligible in early on and then we have to redetermine that eligibility for special education on an IEP.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So in the big picture, why would you say this program is so needed and so important in these children's lives, these families' lives?
Speaker 2:lives. I think that we know that support early has better outcomes long term. So again it goes back to that brain development and what happens in the brain from birth to three years old. It is harder to make changes to the child's brain, especially after age six, but birth to three is the key time. So if a child is at risk of a developmental delay or already showing a delay or disability, the earlier we intervene, the better. Their outcomes for school, for behavior, for socialization, even health outcomes are better the earlier we can intervene and support those needs. But ultimately if we can support and provide some intervention early, they will likely need and research tells us need less support later on. So as a society it helps save some money for special education services down the road.
Speaker 1:And a better outcome for these students.
Speaker 2:Better outcome for the students and for the families.
Speaker 1:And I'll ask you the same question I asked Kirsten personally why is this so important to you and what kind of gratification have you gotten from working with these kids and their families?
Speaker 2:Yeah, before I was in a leadership role. I am a trained speech-language pathologist and the majority of my career I've spent in early intervention and it's not something I even knew existed when I was in graduate school. But when I learned about it afterwards and I was kind of put in this role where I was going into families' homes, I had no idea what I was doing but I knew like okay, earlier is better and how can we best support these families? I think early intervention is really really rewarding. It's really tough work because you never know what you're going to walk into and each family needs different supports. They need something different from you, so it can take a lot out of you, but the outcomes and seeing parents support their child and seeing the difference that they can make in their child's lives is incredibly rewarding.
Speaker 1:I bet. I bet Well, Lindsay, thank you so much for breaking away from your work and the important work that you do to explain this program to us better. As I say, I'm fascinated by it and I'm surprised by how early you get involved with these children's lives. Thanks to you, Lindsay, for your time with us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:And thanks to our listeners for coming to Study Hall today. It's been a pleasure to be with you. I look forward to joining you again soon on the School News Network webpage or wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time and don't forget your pencils.
