Early On Oakland Birth to Three LEA Referral Criteria
- os-specialed
- Oct 2, 2015
- 2 min read
For those of you supporting birth to three, the attachment to this email may be of interest to you. It contains information about the criteria Early On Oakland uses to refer families to their local district of residence when parents call with concerns about a (birth to three) child’s early communication, speech and/or language skills. It is important to note that the changes will only impact which children are sent to the LEAs for evaluation. No changes in eligibility determination are being made.
All referrals for children ages birth to three begin at Oakland Schools. The Early On Oakland referral specialist interviews the parent and bases the recipient of the referral on certain indicators. In the past, the indicators were quite severe. Based on input from SLPs around our county and Early On data it appears that when the criteria is applied, some children birth to three are not referred to their local district, evaluated, and found to require special education services until preschool, even though they likely met eligibility at earlier ages. As a result, Early On Oakland’s referral criteria for birth to three speech and language parent-reported concerns will be more comprehensive moving forward (see attachment). The referral criteria was created using input from SLPs working with the birth to three population and the research base on typically-developing children within this age range. The new criteria for referral should help districts identify children birth to three with true delays earlier so they can provide intervention and ideally exit children from special education prior to kindergarten.
If you have any questions, please contact Dawn Koger, Early On Oakland Consultant at dawn.koger@oakland.k12.mi.us
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