However, if you happen to be up for re-election, you might want to read through to the end. The story hasn't changed that much- more students have more severe needs so we send them away to other states. However, on the tails of a scathing report from USDOE that confirms what special needs parents have been shouting for years, it's time we start the legislative fix needed to address ICT and keeping Delaware's children near home.
It's time to end the Delaware Solution of exiling our children - and to build capacity in our state to take care of our own, we must stop sending our neediest out-of-sight and out-of-mind. The Delaware Solution is not a secret:
And all of this is okay with our Governor, his Budget Director, the President Pro-Tempore, the Speaker of the House, and the Controller General. As it stands, ICT issues one annual report, in February, to the aforementioned state leaders.
Let's breakdown 2013:
In a room somewhere in Delaware a small committee of agency heads (or their designees) meet to determine the future of some our state's most severely dis-advantaged students.
These nine individuals and a designated coordinator compose the Interagency Collaborative Team, ICT, which is charged with determining whether a child's educational needs due a severe needs can or cannot be addressed through the existing resources of a single agency - specifically, the Delaware Department of Education and the programs, districts, and schools who receive their funding through the DOE conduit.
The Interagency Collaborative Team (ICT) is authorized in Title 14 Delaware Code, Chapter 31, Section 3124. The purpose of the ICT is to provide a collaborative interagency approach to service delivery for children and youth with disabilities who present educational needs that cannot be addressed through the existing resources of a single agency. In addition to planning for individual children, the ICT identifies impediments to collaborative service delivery and recommends strategies to remove them.
ICT is comprised of representatives from:
- Division of Prevention and Behavioral Health Services,
- Division of Family Services
- Division of Youth Rehabilitative Services
- Division of Developmental Disabilities Services,
- Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health
- Office of Management and Budget
- Controller General
- Exceptional Children Resources Group, DOE
- Chief Academic Officer, DOE
Collectively, this group charts the future for this very special subset of children and their families. These children are defined as having or requiring Unique Alternative Services. Often, the ICT decisions will permanently impact a family - geographically moving children out of the State of Delaware and away from their families.
In 2013, the cases of 120 children were brought before ICT - 15 more than in 2012. This committee evaluated 43 new cases, while privately placing 117 children and providing three with other unique alternatives, namely deeming these children eligible for 1:1 services in their existing public school setting. Sixty-six of the 117 privately placed children were served in private day programs while the remaining 51 were moved to residential programs.
Of the 51 students who moved into residential programs, 19 were served in-state at AdvoServ, located in Bear, DE. The remaining children, all 32 of them, were moved away from their families, their homes, and their support systems, and sent out of state by ICT. Ten of these 32 were fortunate enough to be accepted at one of two nearby facilities in Maryland (within an hour drive of the state line). The rest? Scurried great distances away, nearly ensuring that these families will never be reunited under one roof for an meaningful period of time.
The annual cost range of placing a student in a residential program: $107.985 -$441,924. Collectively, Delaware spent an average of $14,022,680.00 on residential services. ICT averaged additional costs of $3,291,823.60 on day placements - for a 2012-13 average expenditure of $17,314,504.00. These costs do not include ancillaries like transportation.
Three million more dollars than in the previous year.
We don't argue against the needs of these students. We do find fault in a state that fails to develop the service system these children need to remain close to their families.
Children and youth with severe disabilities, mental health concerns, and significant behavioral needs present unique challenges to schools and families. Gaps in services that support families and childrenin their homes and communities continue to exist. This has contributed to an increasing number of students’ placements in residential settings by multiple agencies. Often these students can be provided an appropriate education within the local schools, but their mental health or behavioral needs prevent their ability to remain in their homes with existing resources.- ICT Annual Report FY13
Delaware suffers from a considerable gap in services - a tremendous shortage of in-state private placements for eligible children. Through the educational lens, these placements are envisioned for students whose disability is so severe that it precludes a child from meaningfully participating in the least restrictive environment (LRE) a public school or district has to offer. In fact, administrative teams are required to prove that every possible environment has been exhausted - including what the layman would call the "most" restrictive environment. Unique Alternative Funding, established by Delaware code and accessed through ICT, was the mechanism by which a child and/or school's representatives could seek a private placement.
However, in practice, ICT has become the stop-gap coverage for placing disabled students whose disabilities impede their success at home - the results of which may spill over into the school setting, but that school officials lack the authority to mitigate because they cannot access the genesis of the behavior or impairment. According to the 2012-13 ICT Annual Report, "Often these students can be provided an appropriate education within the local schools, but their mental health or behavioral needs prevent their ability to remain in their homes with existing resources" - a word-for-word quote taken from the 11-12 ICT Report.
And here is where the devil is in the details, and these children find themselves before ICT -frequently facing expulsion, not just from their schools, but from the state in which they live and the people who love them because this state has failed to invest in or attract the services and providers that these children need to remain here.
In 2011-12 upon meeting the requirement threshold, 23 families were forced to acquiesce to send their children out-of-state for the services they need. In 2012-13, the number of students in need rose to 32. We sent these children to other states who have developed capacity to serve not only their residents, but to generate income by serving ours.
Last school year, the
State of Delaware miserably failed 32 students and their families. This
was not new news. Delaware has always lacked capacity to serve its
students needing residential placement in their home state.
There is no debate regarding whether or not these children need residential placements. ICT has repeatedly chanted the mantra that these cost of residential placements is prohibitive and drain on current resources. Our state's failure lies in the fact that a state as small as Delaware has been unable to establish nor meaningfully invest in the services that the complex needs of these students demand.
Currently, only one in-state residential program, Advoserv, offers the types of services required. And this organization lacks the capacity - either the appropriate model or the physical facilities - to absorb additional students.
The data is clear. In 2004, ICT residentially placed approximately 80 students. Placements trended downward in the ensuing five years to a low of approximately 30 in 2009 when the state moved away from educational classification as the gateway for special services to the Needs-Based Funding Model currently employed universally across the state. Since 2009, the need for residential placements is scaling upward with FY 12 demanding the same need as FY 07. FY13 is substantially similar to FY06.
The need is rising and has been since DOE implemented Needs-Based Funding. Is one tied to the other?
Day program placements have sky rocketed to a 10 YEAR HIGH! Why?
The road from point of crisis to placement is excessively long in Delaware. Short-term placements are just that, short in term and lean in services. The families of beyond-complex students fight their way through the red tape to be rewarded on the other side with the message that there is no home for your child in our state. And our statewide leadership has no qualms about sending this message. They already know what awaits these families - b/c they receive the ICT report annually.
But, the drama doesn't end for these families when their children are ferried away. Imagine fighting your way into a residential placement for your child, sending him or her off to a facility hundreds of miles away, and then undertaking the weekly or monthly travels necessary to maintain some relationship with that child. Imagine learning that, after your child has been served in another state for untold years, that if you relocate to that state to be near your child, your child will loose their services offered under Delaware's ICT umbrella b/c he or she will cease to be a resident of the state when you move out of it.
Children seldom improve enough to simply leave ICT placements. That would be akin to a massive miracle cure. It is far more likely that child that is residentially placed will age out of Delaware's system to be assumed by the home state of their residential provider upon the age of maturity - ultimately shifting the cost of lifelong care out of Delaware. Again, the devil is in the details. It's far less expensive to send 32 children out of state today, knowing that there is a determinate end to the expense of their care - 18 or more likely 21 - than there is in committing to assist in funding their lifelong care.
Forty years after IDEA, the State of Delaware has institutionalized discrimination against our most disabled citizens - denoting them to nothing more than second-class citizens. Where's the outrage? Where are the politicians? Where are the resources that are so desperately needed to ensure families have a chance to be families?
And again, the devil is in the details: While the conversations among the varying state agencies are on-going, according to the latest annual report, ICT's hands are tied to the system currently in place - "the provisions of Delaware Code are specific in their requirements."
If we want to see a change within the ICT system, we need a legislator to step up for our children and fight for them. Townsend? Kowalko? Williams? These children need you!
5 comments:
I just read your last post on this a couple weeks ago. This is just wrong. I love how they say the kids can do well in school, but problems at home force them to make a decision. That is a crock! My guess is the school's don't know how to deal with the behavior cause they aren't accommodating them the way they should in half the cases. This is counseling out to the utmost extreme, and it should be looked at with many eyes and ears. I see an FOIA request coming from someone on this one!
You can’t win with these people. They sue you for not giving their kids what they want and then complain when you do. The worst part, is that the state general fund is not paying for this, but the property tax payers in the district are via the Tuition Tax.
Wrong Subset Will Garfinkel - I've known some of these families quite well. They go before ICT with their child's representatives, all in agreement that everything in this state has been tried and failed. They know their only chance at helping their child and their family (remember that there are frequently other child in the home, suffering bc the family has been in crisis for months or even years) is to remove a child from their home. These are not the lawsuits of the rich and famous, undertaken for a free private education for a little ADD.
And What they don't count on is that Delaware's system of removal will mean a permanent destruction of their family unit. Any means of reunification falls on the providing facility in some other state. Our children are income in these states and thus there is little to motivate these folks to reunite families.
The system is broken. These children should be given private placements in Delaware. We should take care of our own. Our legislators, agencies, and departments refuse to act to bring these children back to Delaware. Delaware's dollars should be spent here. And enticing providers to our state, creating these placements here at home, does more than drive family reunification. It drive's jobs as well.
But, what do I know, I'm just a special ed parent.
Will Garfinkel, want to know what else the taxpayers in this state are paying? Check out all the attorney fees our Delaware schools are paying because special education isn't what it's crack up to be in this state. Furthermore, I would have to guess at least 1/2 these kids didn't get the proper special education they should have during their younger years. This is something that is their rights, by Federal law. This isn't something parents want, it's what their children NEED. And yes, when my child has perfect special education, I will not complain. Delaware isn't there yet.
exceptional delaware, we agree. And we believe that we are at a rare juncture where the USDOE has opened the issue for debate in our state. We must drive the conversations, we must control the narrative, or this will be another opportunity squandered in the hands of our education leaders in Dover.
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