Services for Children with Disabilities

• Direct and related services can be received in four main settings for children with disabilities.

Hospital Setting

• Evaluations and treatments, ordered through a therapist, bridge the gap between inpatient and outpatient care.
• A doctor's order is direct, while physical therapy is a related service.

Outpatient Clinic/Community Setting

• Access to therapists requires a doctor's prescription and insurance coverage.
• Related services are provided.

Child's Home Setting

• Home-based services are for children who are too young, homebound, or medically fragile.
• Services include play for prevention.
• Physical, occupational, speech, and/or visual therapists can provide services.

School Setting

• Services are incorporated into the Individualized Education Program (IEP) under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).
• Some children may not be categorized, thus missing out on needed help.
• Support and related services are offered, such as physical, speech, or occupational therapy.
• Occupational therapy in schools may focus on skills like handwriting.

Shared Responsibilities of Direct and Related Service Personnel

• Helping students with disabilities (SWD) get the maximum benefit from education.
• Working in the same environment.
• Creating the IEP.
• Preparing the client for assessment and instruction.

Roles of Related Service Personnel

• Physical therapists (PT): Assist with motor skills and provide assistive devices to build strength and endurance.
• PTs work on walking skills, postural control, coordination, spasticity, and navigating public spaces.
• Occupational therapists (OT): Focus on fine motor skills for physical activities, daily living, sensory integration (tactile awareness and proprioception).
• OTs address equipment needs to perform tasks, grasping, dressing, and self-regulation techniques.
• Speech therapists: Address communication and cognition, enhancing expressive language skills, and treat swallowing problems.
• Therapeutic Recreation Specialists: Address adapted physical education (APE) content and develop plans for use outside school.

Role of Direct Service Personnel

• APE teachers work face-to-face daily, providing services in the physical education setting, assisting with problems, and aiding transition.
• Adaptive PE assists in the IEP process, transition services from early intervention to K12.

Role of Indirect Service Personnel

• Indirect service professionals facilitate student collaboration.
• Four basic roles include:
  • Advocacy: Promoting, maintaining, or defending a cause.
  • Trainer/Educator: Helping others acquire knowledge related to a specific disability, situation, or student.
  • Fact Finder: Reviewing and summarizing information for the consultee.
  • Consultant Specialist: Focusing on problem-solving processes rather than the content.

Barriers Impacting Indirect Service Delivery

• Time constraints, and attitudes.

Social-Cultural Competency

• A teacher's ability to work effectively in cross-cultural situations.
• Cultural dissonance arises from race logic, gender logic, and ethnicity.
• Understanding students' interaction styles, norms, customs, traditions, foods, and home language is crucial.

Creating Socially Just Environments

• Social justice aims to combat inequity in schools and society.
• Transforming educational structures that diminish student learning opportunities is essential.
• Recognizing the need to transform societal structures that perpetuate injustice.

Best Practices for Interacting with Youth with Disabilities

• Cues and prompts can be:
  • Physical: Tapping or moving a limb.
  • Visual: Using pictures, signs, symbols, gestures.
  • Verbal: Speaking directly to the student.
• Verbalization should clarify actions or concepts at the child's eye level, keeping it simple and short.
• Visualization uses films, videos, internet resources, pictures, posters, and diagrams.
• Kinesthesis involves muscular activity for error correction and improved performance.

Elements for Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

• UDL expands modifications and adaptations for a single person to the entire activity environment.
• Originally focused on removing architectural barriers for people with disabilities.
• Assists in designing curricula that include all students in learning environments, using materials flexibly.
• Instructional supports should include materials, methods, and environments for all students.

Three Main Principles of the UDL Framework

• Engagement: Stimulate interest and motivation in various ways.
• Representation: Present material in multiple formats.
• Expression: Allow various ways for students to express their learning.
• Ensure curricula meet student needs before they enter the program.

Major Categories of Activity Modification

• Equipment: Modifications that enhance a participant's success compared to using standard equipment.
• Rules: Deviations from the original or culturally accepted rules of the game.
• Environment: Decreasing distractions, increasing visual cues, and enhancing accessibility.
• Instruction: Verbal cues, braille, demonstration, or modeling.

Tenets of Systematic Teaching

• Systematic teaching considers the interaction between the performer, environment, and task.
• Emphasizes the need for repetition and reinforcement when learning a new skill.
• Acknowledges that emotion affects motor skill learning.

Task Analysis

• Task Analysis: Components of an activity are identified and ordered by difficulty level.
• Essential for creating positive educational experiences.
• A teaching and assessment tool that evaluates the learning process and skill components, considering equipment, rules, environment, and instruction.

Ecological Task Analysis

• Focuses on the environment, performer, and task to predict movement performance.
• Unlike standard task analysis, it considers the wholeness of the skill, not divided components.
• Task Analysis: A powerful strategy to improve learning for students with unique needs.

Developmental Task Analysis

• Outlines all task and environmental factors influencing student performance in general movement categories.
• Includes General and Specific Task Analysis components.

Traditional Task Analysis

• Involves identifying and ordering components of an activity by difficulty level.

Consequences of Undesirable Behaviors

• Exclusion from community events.
• Decreased social interactions and friendships.
• Interference with skill development.
• Loss of skill development time due to behavior interventions.
• Exposure to demeaning treatment.

Stimulus, Reinforcement, and Punishment

• Stimulus: A measurable event influencing behavior
• Reinforcement: Increases or maintains behavior frequency.
• Punishment: Decreases behavior frequency.

Four Functions of Behavior

• Attention: Misbehavior to gain social attention.
• Access: Misbehavior to gain access to something.
• Escape: Misbehavior to avoid a task.
• Sensory Stimulation: Engaging in behaviors that stimulate the senses.

Strategies for Increasing Desirable Behaviors

• Prompting: Using guidance to encourage behaviors.
• Redirection: Offering an alternative to engage attention.
• Token Economy: Earning tokens for rewards.
• Contingency Management: Behavioral contracts.

Strategies for Decreasing Undesirable Behaviors

• Reinforcement:
  • Reinforcing other behaviors.
  • Reinforcing incompatible behaviors.
  • Reinforcing response rates.
• Timeouts (Punishment):
  • Observational, Seclusion, Self, or Exclusionary.
• Other punishment methods may be used if effective.

Addressing Specific Behaviors

• Self-Indulgent: Reinforce other behaviors and ensure the student does not get what they want.
• Noncompliant: Reinforce other behaviors and ensure behavior does not allow escape.
• Aggressive: Time-out and punishment (ensuring these don't provide attention).
• Self-Stimulatory: Addressed through reinforcement, time-out, and punishment.

Adaptive Behavior

• A collection of social, practical, and conceptual skills learned and performed daily.

Categories of Adaptive Behavior

• Conceptual Skills: Language, reading, writing, money concepts, self-direction.
• Social Skills: Interpersonal skills, responsibility, self-esteem, obeying rules.
• Practical Skills: Daily living, occupational skills, safety, travel, healthcare.
  • Most influenced by rehabilitation professionals.
• Conceptual (least influenced by rehabilitation professionals).

Classification of Intellectual Disability (ID)

• Needed Supports Classification: Determines support type, duration, setting, and resources, not based on IQ.

Types of Supports

• Intermittent: Short-term, e.g., medical.
• Limited: Longer-term but still limited, e.g., employment training.
• Extensive: Ongoing daily, e.g., home living.
• Pervasive: Constant, highly intensive across all environments.

Impact of Learning Characteristics of Children with ID on Movement Skill Acquisition

• Slower acquisition of movement skills due to:
  • Differences in the amount and rate of information they can learn.
  • Short attention span and limited ability to generalize information.
  • Lower IQ associated with decreased fitness, strength, and endurance.
  • Need for extensive support (4+ years behind peers).
  • Skill acquisition improves with age but remains significantly impacted.