VIDBE-Q Volume 67 Issue 4
Additionally, in my experience, the experts in the educational system have
lacked the expertise to accurately identify and educate my daughter. She was
identified as multiply disabled, which in my opinion, seems to act as a 'catch all'
for students who are not well understood.
What I have learned from navigating through this experience is that
deafblindness is a disability with limited awareness and available resources. The
school district has been very reluctant to acknowledge and serve our child's unique
and individualized needs as a deafblind student. In our case, it has fallen on us as
parents to go out and find the experts at our own expense who can properly
identify how our child learns and communicates.
We have been advocating for over 4 years to obtain services in order for our
child to make educational gains. After several contentious reevaluation and IEP
meetings, filing due process each year, and going through an administrative
hearing as a pro se parent, we were finally able to get the word "intervener" added
to the IEP. However, without there being a universal understanding of the role of
an intervener, and of how an intervener should be trained, it's been extremely
difficult to get intervener services.
In the two months since an intervener began working with my daughter,
we've immediately seen positive changes. She is connecting to her environment,
using tactile sign language, engaging in learning concepts, forming sentences with
