Rosa is a charming and lovable 11-year-old. But she struggles in school and, isolated behind thick glasses, she sometimes seems disturbingly blank to her teachers. Rosa’s guardians knew that her school could do more to meet her educational needs, but for months their requests yielded no evaluation for special services.
Any parent who has navigated a school bureaucracy understands how frustrating it can be to get the system to respond their child’s unique needs. For caregivers of children like Rosa – who has had to change schools more often then most kids change hairstyles – barriers to educational services are just one more complication in a life marked by bureaucratic rules and regulations. Getting their kids’ educational needs met is especially complicated. So it was a great day for Rosa when her Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) caseworker called on a Treehouse educational advocate to help break the logjam.
The advocate mobilized immediately. She learned that Rosa was scarred by a childhood of horrible abuse, documented in a 16-volume DSHS file. In those files the advocate found old school records clearly documenting Rosa’s special needs. “This was a great find,” she says. “It showed that Rosa needed to be reevaluated immediately.” Thanks to the advocate’s intervention, within a month Rosa was receiving special services in reading, math and writing.
Rosa’s educational advocate requested the child’s early medical records, which had stopped following her shortly after her sixth birthday, and learned from them that Rosa was born 12 weeks early. This vital piece of medical history was a surprise to the adults who were caring for her, and it proved to be a key piece in the Rosa puzzle. The complications of prematurity explain Rosa’s poor vision and other physical problems. “We forwarded this information to Rosa’s medical provider who will now be better able to serve her medical needs,” says the advocate. The medical history, she adds, is also a boon to Rosa’s education. “It helps us understand some of the struggles she is having in school and gives us insight into how to address them.”
