The guideline here is one that we all need to work on – including us.  Ultimately we would like to see systems in place where services for special needs children and adults begin with a comprehensive assessment of the individual and the family, then proceed to with careful case management leads to seamless delivery of services through residential placement (if residential placement occurs at all) and continues through the transition process back home or to college of independent living.  

The emphasis here is on the system of services.  Rather than thinking of one program having the responsibility of "fixing" a young person, successful outcomes depend upon a sequence of events and services that fit together in a process that results in success. One school or program is unlikely to do the job by itself. Making a series of services and event into a system is what good case management is about. 

You cannot tell who is a good case manager by the job title. Educational consultants, employee assistance professionals, social workers and primary care physicians might all be good case managers but also might not.  People working for insurance companies whose responsibility is to determine medical necessity for benefits to be paid on your health insurance might be called case managers but they are not likely to be that in the sense we are discussing; their real job is to make sure your insurance company does not pay money they can avoid paying. 

Increasingly, the parts of this are becoming available.  This means departing from the historic educational consultant model of a number of years ago in which students going to “behavioral change” schools were guided by highly educators who often had limited clinical knowledge and might not be receptive to clinical input, would do a “school search” with the idea of a long term residential school placement, either flowing into college or a boarding school, presuming that the young person should never return home.  Too often parents simply searching for school or program on the Internet, or with guidance of “head-hunting” consultants (not to be confused with educational consultants such as IECA member consultants who work only for families) are still looking at merely finding a school without adequately considering the family context of the young people.  Too seldom are providers of services in the private sector thinking of themselves simply as part of a continuum of services.

Last updated November 15, 2008