Disability Services Advice

Parents Forum
21

I don’t think you should submit paperwork for each, no, and you shouldn’t do deposits either. You and your son can visit the school and talk with them and then decide on which one. You might investigate accommodations but honestly, they are not optional: they are mandated by law.

Once the acceptance has gone through, you can meet with disabilities formally (they will want to meet with him actually), submit paperwork, and talk about accommodations. A single room is a common accommodation. The bathroom will be a harder issue. Think about social pros and cons of a single too. A small suite might be ideal.

Be aware that disabilities offices aren’t always geared to helping students so much as filtering requests to keep the integrity of the curriculum and avoid " undue administrative and financial burdens" for the school. They can arrange things through housing (or direct you), and will provide letters for your son to take to professors. Sometimes accommodations have to be negotiated and that is when other personnel are needed.

We found deans and medical personnel to be key in applying pressure to professors, to be honest, and it took a year or so to figure out the system and how to make it work. The main message is, don’t go by the disabiltiies office only. Talk to a dean or other administrator and find out who else can help. Sometimes there are extra advisors. If there is a health center, they should be aware of your son’s medical issues and a PCP there will be important.

For documentation, I suggest you write the letter for providers. They don’t resent this! The docs or therapists or whoever can doctor it up but you need to research and network and figure out the list of accommodations needed. You don’t need documentation for each accommodation if they are listed under a diagnosis that covers them all.

Feel free to PM me. I assure you that this can be worked out and your son can thrive but it is not easy.

Pick a school before doing anything at all complicated. Once he accepts the offer of admission people will be cooperative and you will have the right to have all the meetings he needs.

One other thing: I am a firm believer that kids should not choose schools based on anything to do with disabilities. That really goes against the civil rights the ADA law intended to insure. We had to trailblaze a bit but every school should be able to understand reasonabe, well-documented needs for accommodations and should provide them.

You will find you cannot just drop him off and may occasionally have to nudge things a bit, but only in the beginning!

22

It seems to me that the schools SHOULD be willing to process a disability request for a single room well before you have to put down a deposit. It is the student’s need due to his disability, which you can document, and I’d guess that ADA obligates this kind of early information.

About looking into other sorts of disability needs: I think that a good thing to look for is HOW does the school approach this? Is there an office/employee whose primary job is dealing with students needing accommodations? What is the process for applying? Is it very well-defined, up front?

These offices approach these things in two basic ways: (1) figure out what you need to apply on your own, figure out what you think you might need as accommodations on your own, and then we will let you know if you qualify and if you can get what you say you need; VERSUS (2) let’s sit down and talk about your particular situation and figure out together what sorts of documentation will be required; once documentation is provided and services (in general) approved, let’s sit together and talk about what you think you might need and we (the school) will offer suggestions too, based on our experience with other students. In case it isn’t obvious, you are going to want that second approach.

23

While school will meet the ADA requirements, how they meet them may different greatly. The local state school offers tutoring but it is group tutoring (max 10) which fills up fast. They have the requirement that you must go to every session or be kicked out. The tutoring is what the grad ad chooses to show them each week and not necessarily what your child doesn’t understand. Tutoring is limited to certain classes. Group tutoring isn’t always the best for someone on the autism spectrum. A regional private school offers one on one tutoring to everyone, even if they are not ADA. They have a list of classes posted online which they have tutors for followed by a statement that if you need a tutor for a class that isn’t listed, let them know and they will find you a tutor at no cost to you. While both schools meet ADA requirements they do it in very different ways.

24

Noone should have to make a college decision based on disability. That is contrary to the whole intent of the law. And it is nearly impossible to ascertain the true policies and effectiveness of accommodations at a school before actually attending.

Granted, we had to trailblaze a bit, but the logic of the law and the accommodations needed for specific disabilities wins out, as long as the accommodations requested are reasonable and don’t pose undue administrative or financial burdens on the school, or substantially change the academic program.

Precedents are being established in court for some of these issues, but in general the concept of accommodations is pretty well established at most schools.

If applicants make choices based on where accommodations are being carried out most effectively, the other schools will never change.

I honestly believe it is crucial for applicants to make their choices just as anyone without a disability would: size, location, academics, “vibe” and so on, and NOT based on the needs of their disability. The schools are obligated to meet their obligations and it is not hard to convince them, in my experience, with proper documentation and professional advice.

The OP’s son has a complex situation with a serious medical problem as well as being on the spectrum, but I truly believe he can make it work at the college of his choice.

25

My friend’s son has UC and he was accommodated with a private room & bathroom. My son also has GI issues and he feels that the Hall bathroom is a better fit than a suite that is a shared bathroom because it would be rare for the stalls to be completely occupied in the hall bathroom. He had a 504 in High School and was given similar accommodation through his college. Colleges will differ on how accommodating they are, so it is important that you talk with each school and get a feel for how they will accommodate your son. The college my son attends is known for having an excellent office for Student Disabilities and they were so encouraging to my son about applying for accommodations.

26

I have one friend whose son has had UC since he was a little boy and another whose D has celiac disease. Both went away to college, but neither is on the spectrum and each is able to self-advocate.

My oldest son is on the spectrum. Unfortunately, although he is “gifted,” college did not work out for him for various reasons. For your son, I would make sure that HE knows and completely understands what might flare his UC. My friend whose son has it says that sometimes he doesn’t make good food choices, even though he completely understands what will flare him. If your son is relatively newly diagnosed, there could be foods that he doesn’t realize might trigger him. A suggestion I have for you is to, in addition to any appointments with the ADA people, make an appointment with the school nutritionist. If the school happens to have a dietary or nutrition major, you will be in great luck. At my D’s school, there was a dietician major and the department provided individualized planning for any student who asked. My D was a vegetarian 10 years ago when it was not as big a thing on campus as it is now. She was able to get specific foods ordered that she could eat. You could consult with food services/nutrition to see what they offer. At my D’s school, there was an education program (she was in it) which required students to be off campuses during the day. Bag lunches could be ordered and provided on 24 hours notice. Check for something similar at the schools you are looking into.

Good luck.

27

Along with the nutritionist, the director of dining services will often meet. But much better after your son accepts at a school. Schools have online menus, and often a student can order meals in advance (gluten free for celiac, allergen-free for allergies, and trigger-free for UC). There is a LOT of help in this area and we have never dealt with it through disability services. Nor did disability services do much for academic accommodations, except for provide letters. Deans and health service folks helped a lot with professors.

One of the best schools we experienced didn’t even have a disabilities office!

I agree with the suggestion to get tuition refund insurance. If you have financial aid, you not only get back what you paid but also the financial aid amount awarded.

28

There is no possible way I could disagree with this more, at least for the case of kids on the autism spectrum.

Some schools will offer your autistic kid “supports” that don’t support. They’ll say things like, “We find that kids do better if they’re super organized.” Oh, so your ADHD accommodations work perfectly for kids without ADHD? Your accommodations for kids with executive function difficulties are just dandy for kids that don’t have executive function problems? You add layers of extra paperwork and administrivia for kids whose problem is an inborn inability to deal with organization? Yeah that’ll work. Oh wait no it won’t.

29

Cardinal Fang, maybe you can share how you ascertained that certain schools were good and certain schools not so good, before accepting. I think there are a lot of empty promises (and hidden gems) making the choice on that basis iffy.

30

You can ascertain that certain schools are not so good for your child when they start explaining how they’d address your child’s disability and you that their solutions aren’t going to work. So, for example, you present a doctor’s certificate saying that your child has diagnosis X and needs a single, and the school says we don’t grant singles for diagnosis X because our experience is that people with diagnosis X don’t need singles. You could take them to court, or you could send your kid to a different school that offers acceptable accommodations.

For another example, suppose your kid has ADHD and needs a quiet room to take tests in (or a keyboard, or some other testing accommodation). And school A says they can get this accommodation, provided they go to the disabilities office before every test in every class, get a form, and deliver it to their professor a week before the test. But your kid has ADHD and is therefore disorganized, and you know perfectly well there is no way they’ll be organized enough to do this. Just don’t send your kid to school A to flunk out.

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  • you realize their solutions aren't going to work.
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When was the last evaluation done with your student? Some colleges will want more current than 2016 evaluations.

I would talk to your students special education case manager. There should be a transition plan as part of his IEP…and that should have been started the year he was 14 years old, I believe. If a re-evaluation is scheduled for 2019, I would suggest you get this done sooner than later so the colleges will have current information.

33

I’m sorry, I didn’t read the whole thread because it’s late, but I want to respond. My apologies if I’m just repeating what someone else said.

My S19 has Asperger’s. My best friend’s daughter, also a senior, has Crohn’s. As you can imagine, accommodations have been a real topic of discussion between us. Here’s what we both did and what I would advise you to do.

You seem primarily concerned with housing, so do some research on each school’s website first. Do they have singles and private or semi-private bathrooms for freshman? For years after that? They can’t magically create what they don’t have. Also, read the disabilities office website. See what you can learn in advance about the availability of various accommodations and about their processes.

At each school, meet with someone in the disabilities office before you need to commit to a school. If at all possible, have the student there. They are not the admissions office. They’re not there to compete for your son against other colleges. Please don’t take that approach. Tell them what your son’s diagnoses are and what accommodations you think he needs. I promise, both diagnoses will be things they’ve seen before and the housing accommodations you’re asking for will make sense to them. Ask them about the availability of the accommodations for all 4 years. Ask them if there are enough singles for everyone who needs them. Ask them about the process for applying for accommodations for freshman year and then for subsequent years, both what documentation is needed and exactly how the process works. I spoke to two different schools and they had very different procedures.

Do basically the same thing for the academic accommodations he needs. Be prepared to hear that different schools solve problems different ways. Ask how the professors get told about accommodations that students require (again, different schools have different approaches) and what happens if a professor pushes back or doesn’t want to comply.

I’m pretty sure that no school will formally commit to accommodations before you need to pick a school. But you should come away from these conversations with a good sense of what will happen. I spoke to two schools, my friend with the kid with Crohn’s spoke to two or three others. Each time, we were assured that, given appropriate documentation, a single as a freshman would be no problem. Based on that, I’d run from any school that hems and haws or otherwise doesn’t leave you feeling confident that they are willing and able to give your son a single. My general sense is that private or semi-private bathrooms aren’t as common as single rooms. (I could be wrong about this.) Again, they can’t give you what they don’t have, so think about what arrangements he can live with. Also, will his doctor write a letter saying a single bathroom is medically required?

You’ll then take all the information you have about accommodations and everything else relevant about the school and pick a school.

34

I do not believe you can really ascertain how well a school accommodates a student beforehand.

I do believe you can find out more once the student accepts admission, but much of the reality becomes apparent in the first months.

Often disability offices serve to protect the school and don’t do a lot for the student. The informal system for accommodations often does more than the formal one. Getting into a department for a major can help. It is hard at first to know how to “work the system” but it gets easier.

I do believe that at least some of us have to trailblaze a bit. Otherwise things will never change. Because of the rarity of one of my kids’ disabilities, we were forced to trailblaze, frankly. From age 4 on. We did not limit her choices at all.

My other two kids have some of the disabilities discussed here, and some others as well. I still believe that students with disabilities should be able to go where they want, and avoiding schools that are not good with accommodations just allows the schools to continue as they are.

35

Hi there. I have two children with disabilities that need accommodations, one is a third year college student and one is a HS senior going through the college search process now. Their disabilities are different than your student’s, but I can share a bit of our experiences and considerations. Both my children need physical and academic accommodations for their physical disability. They need ‘no stairs access’ (1 sometimes uses a scooter), handicapped safe bathrooms, ability to use computer in class, ability to use computer for exams with extra time, notetakers, and ability to record classes (sometimes needed).
For my third year and now HS senior, we met with the disabilities services leader at every school we visited. We requested a conference and met, student and parent. Our student described his/her disability and current accommodations. In 90% of the cases, I felt the disabilities services representative went out of their way to be helpful and discuss possible accommodations. One school resource suggested we could come over the summer to ensure assigned dorm room and other accommodations were adequate by walking the paths, visiting the classrooms etc. One resource said ‘we will find a way to do whatever you need’. Of the 10+ schools we visited with my older student, there was only one that said ‘this really isn’t a good school for someone with your type of disability’. I could have pushed that one, but it left an impression on my daughter and she had lots of other options.
One question I thought was helpful during these discussions was ‘have you ever had a student with xxxx and what accommodation was difficult to provide or what was hardest for that student?’. That type of question will give you a sense of how hard they are willing to try to accommodate.
While some say disability access shouldn’t be a decision consideration, I don’t agree. Sure, there is the law, but would you rather go to a school where the disabilities office goes out of their way to be helpful and makes it easy or one that challenges every request? In addition, since my kids both needed physical handicapped access, for some schools this is just hard. Sure, they could place my student in buildings that were accessible and sure, they could move classrooms as needed, but if there were large parts of the campus that were unaccessible, how could their college experience be the best it could be??

Good luck!

36

@momtold. Well said. You can really tell the difference between a school that cares about it students and wants the best for them and those who just cover the schools butt with a few basics to satisfy ADA laws. I would suggest getting a letter from the schools disability services which state how they can accommodate your child. This way there is no miscommunication and can be used to remind them of what was stated if the accommodations don’t come through.

37

Just reemmber, once in college, your college student will need to likely be his or her own advocate. There won’t be a case manager to mediate on their behalf or chase them down to get things accomplished. In my experience helping others, this is the hardest thing. Many students are not strong advocates for themselves. Some don’t ask for the accommodations. Some don’t ask for assistance when needed. And if something isn’t going right, some don’t seek help.

The most important part of your kid’s transition planning needs to be self advocacy. All of the accommodations in the world are not going to do a speck of good if they are not implemented.

In HS, the staff gets lists of kids and the specific accommodations they require, then there is follow up by a case manager to be sure the staff understands and implements the accommodations.

This isn’t always the case on the college level…so the student needs to have a written copy of their accommodations, and needs to be prepared to sit down and discuss these privately with their instructors, if needed.

The other pitfall…some kids get to college, and they don’t want to be different than their peers…so they don’t want to use the accommodations and sometimes wait until it’s too late to access them.

So…please, please…teach your HS kids to be excellent self advocates for their needs.

And make sure your kiddo signs the FERPA form so that you can communicate with the college if you need to.

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At many schools accommodations are discussed between professor and students with the letters provided by the disabilities office, which don’t always list specific accommodations but instead just state that the student registered.

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@compmom I agree that at some schools there is a discussion.

But student self advocacy for the specific accommodations needed is a skill every student needs to develop, in my opinion.

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Agree. Of course students need to advocate if able.

We just never experienced (three kids, several schools) a disability office that would set up accommodations other than physical ones like wheelchair access.