School & Community Support

To create programs that allow individuals with disabilities to maximize their success in schools and in the community, to improve the collaboration between professionals and the families of individuals with disabilities, and ultimately, to create systems of support that improves the lives of all involved.

Professionals and family members have long recognized that successfully supporting individuals with complex needs can pose a significant challenge to their skills. As a result, additional consultative assistance is often needed to assure that the needs of the individual, his or her family, and the staff who support them are adequately met. Moreover, given the complexity of the issues related to developing sucessful supports in the least restrictive setting, any consultative support must be available across all domains of the individuals' life: at home, in schools and classrooms, and in community settings.

It is our experience that consultative services that are context-sensitive; based on the direct and ongoing interaction with the individual with complex needs, the staff who support him or her, and his or her family, offer the best outcome. We have extensive experience providing context-senstive supports to individuals, staff, and families; offering ongoing direct support to professional and paraprofessional staff, and to individuals with complex needs and their families wherever the team determines our services are needed (e.g., grade level classrooms, typical community settings, special education classrooms, school buses, homes, etc.).

The scope of our services typically includes direct interaction and support, formal written assessments, data system development, program or intervention plan development and adjustment, ongoing interaction and coaching of staff in the typcial settings of life, team meeting participation, IEP and individual service plan development, and other services that may be requested by staff.

Additionally, we provide traditional in-service training for staff in a variety of areas related to supporting individuals to become as independent as possible; this includes paraprofessional skill-building, behavior program development, and a host of other training activities related to characteristics of specific disability populations.

SCS staff members also provide specific context-sensitive assessments for staff who are attempting to discern the most appropriate educational setting for individual students. Examples of these assessments include Functional Behavioral Assessments, Independent Educational Evaluations, Augmentative and Alternative Communication Evaluations, and include person-specific recommendations for programmatic supports that are useful to all staff and can be implemented in the settings in which the individual is supported.