Next Month and Beyond

Looking ahead to next month, the Portage Pediatric Rehab Team would like to come and do a presentation for the group. I'm working to schedule them for next month’s meeting which will be Wednesday, February 17th. Details and a flier will follow in the next few weeks. If there is anything specific you would like the team to talk about, please let me know and I'll pass it onto them.

Looking even a little further into the future, April is National Autism Awareness Month. Last year we held a potluck dinner at the Little Huskies Child Development Center and we invited the CCISD to do a presentation. No concrete plans have been made yet, which is why I bring this up this far in advance: I really want to hear your thoughts and ideas. Do we want to do a potluck again?  Something else?

Finally, I want to put out there that if anyone would like to host a group meeting to let me know. In the past we've done scrap booking, stress relief, yoga, a resource night and more – and we can do them again if someone wants to take up the mantle. Even if you don't want to host a meeting but you have an idea, we want to hear about it. Feel free to leave your comments here on the blog, or you contact us directly – we want to hear from you!

January 2010 Meeting Wrap-Up

At our last meeting on January 20th, 2010, we had Dr. Jill Kalcich present. She talked about probiotics, chelation therapy, food allergies/intolerances, and good nutrition. The basis of the presentation was, if you have a healthy stomach, you will have a healthy mind. There were a few new faces and many old faces present. A lot of great questions and wonderful conversation took place.

I've been receiving some emails and a few phone calls from other people and groups in the community that unfortunately heard about the presentation too late and would have liked to have joined in on the presentation. If there continues to be interest in this presentation, I'll ask Dr. Kalcich if she could come present again later in the year, perhaps expanding on topics already discussed. If there are any suggestions for topics, please let us know here in the comments, or contact me or Kathleen directly.

January 2010 Group Meeting

You can view the flier for January's support group meeting by clicking here.

December 2009 Notes and Documents

During December 2009's group meeting we were lucky to have attorney Kevin Mackey talk with us about special education law. He had a number of hand-outs that he made available.

If you weren't able to get one at the meeting, you can now get them here.

Click here to view all of the documents. For your convenience, here's links to the individual documents:

• Kevin Mackey's notes from the evening (2 pages)
  
• Resolving Special Education Disputes - (31 pages) Document from the Michigan Deparement of Education detailing the "resolution of disputes through alternative dispute resolution processes."
  
• Procedures for Dispute Resolution (2 pages)
• Timeline for 'Initials' (1 page) From the MDE, a timeline initial evaluations and initial individualized education programs (IEPs)
• Michigan Special Education Mediation Program Brochure (2 pages) From the MDE, a brochure about state-provided mediation programs. (Sorry, it's sideways, you may want to print this out in order to read it more easily.)
  
• Standards for Extended School Year Services in Michigan (7 pages)
• Referral to Special Education Services Timeline (2 pages) This one is from the Ann Arbor Parent Advisory Committee.