6-month reviews! There are so many meetings in early intervention (EI) and scheduling can be very difficult with all of the individual team members, including the family!  Some may even think “I see the family every week, why do we need to get together for another meeting?”.  Well, a key part of EI is monitoring the plan, celebrating the progress and modifying the outcomes, strategies and supports as a team.  In fact, it’s the federal law! Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) as well as the CFC Procedural Manual state that the IFSP shall be reviewed at least every six months, or more frequently as needed. So, the answer is Necessity!

Who needs to be there?

It is best practice for all IFSP team members to participate in 6-month review meetings.  This can be tricky to schedule and is typically why many service coordinators begin scheduling the 6-month well in advance of the meeting.   At a minimum, the service coordinator and the family or caregivers must be present.  However, if changes to the IFSP are needed, the full IFSP team must be convened in order to discuss and reach consensus.

What needs to be prepared prior to a 6-month review?

Families have a right to prior notice. As such, service coordinators will provide at least a 10-day notice to families and request a 6-month progress report from the other team members. 

The EI Providers currently supporting the family will submit a 6-month report, which must summarize the child’s progress and response to intervention related to the IFSP outcomes, prior to the scheduled review meeting.   

What is your role/responsibility?

Prepare in advance for the 6-month reviews for your families – plan a meeting date (service coordinator) and confirm it with all team members, and prepare and submit your 6-month progress summary to the service coordinator prior to the meeting (provider)

Participate fully in the meeting by sharing in the celebration of progress that the team has seen as a whole, encouraging the family to guide the team’s next steps with intervention by sharing their priorities, and identifying areas that need further support and/or resources.

Impact of a 6-month review meeting:

The family has their EI team together to review, celebrate, and modify the plan. This gives everyone a focused opportunity to talk, solve problems, and plan together!

The team may agree that significant progress has been made, some outcomes achieved, and/or they may agree that the family requires continued support to achieve the stated outcomes.  Whatever the consensus, the IFSP may shift in terms of outcomes, strategies or early intervention service frequency/intensity. 

Resources to support you in your work:

• Celebrating Progress Video
• Resource Module on the 6-month reviews
• 6-month progress summary format

Save the Date

The CFC Conferences are coming up soon!  Please save the date for the CFC Southern conference on April 27, 2018 in Effingham and the CFC Northern conference on May 4, 2018 in Palos Hills.

Call for Nominations for CFC Conference Awards

Do you know a CFC staff member who always goes above and beyond in their work with families and other team members?  Maybe it’s someone who is always family-centered, always advocating on behalf of families or providers, or someone who is always keeping the team together and organized.  If you do, please consider nominating them for an award!  

The nomination process is very simple and now open– help us recognize these exceptional individuals!

Submit nominations via the following link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2018CFCAwards 

Child Find has produced a Transition Planning Conference video series developed by parents, early intervention, and early childhood personnel to provide information as you approach a child’s transition from Early Intervention services to early childhood services.

You can view or share the following with families in its entirety (one 28 minute video) or simply share the individual part(s) you think is most helpful to them:

• Full version
• Part 1: Introductions and Child Background
• Part 2: Transition Process
• Part 3: Parent's Questions

Child Find also provided a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) video with a companion document that highlights the actual questions parents might consider: Questions_Parents_Should_Ask_About_EI-EC_Transition.pdf

Did you miss an EITP winter webinar?  A recording of our past webinars are available on our EITP YouTube page! Subscribe to our page or the EITP Winter Webinar 2018 playlist so you won't miss upcoming webinar recordings.

Please note that EITP is currently developing a sample of our winter webinars into Moodle courses which will be available for credit.  Check the EITP Online Events Calendar for updates!

In the meantime, click the title of the webinar to view the recording.  *No credit is given for viewing the recording*

In each Newsletter, EITP highlights a free article focused on Early Intervention that will be available for PDF download from the Young Exceptional Children journal!  

Currently, we are featuring "Transdisciplinary Model and Early Intervention: Building Collaborative Relationships" by Valerie E. Boyer and Stacy D. Thompson from Young Exceptional Children, v17, September 2014.  This link will be open until June 1, 2018.

"Early Intervention (EI) teams can be defined by the degree of collaboration among team members. Transdisciplinary (TD) teams utilize extensive collaboration, requiring members to understand individual team roles, have knowledge of different disciplines, and a willingness to work together to provide EI services. Awareness among those working in EI programs or with EI programs is critical to improving services for young children and their families. This article offers a description of a TD model of service delivery, some basic information about team members, and suggestions for collaboration to build team unity." Abstract from ERIC

The “Service Coordination Corner” is a new column featured in our newsletters to spotlight the important work that service coordinators are doing within the Illinois EI System.

The role of the Service Coordinator is critical in EI, and as such, there are many initiatives underway in Illinois and nationally.  Here are some exciting updates and resources you can use in your work:

• Did you know about the fantastic resources available on the SC Online Resource Page? New and experienced service coordinators may benefit from resources in Section 6 related to meeting facilitation and working with interpreters and translators. Section 8 offers tips and tools that can help balance all the tasks that service coordinators engage in daily.  Do you have tips or suggestions you’d like to share? You can submit your tips and strategies via this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/SCtips-SCtraining
• Do you ever wonder how ‘coaching’ applies to your role as a Service Coordinator? Check out this very brief resource on coaching for SCs: http://veipd.org/earlyintervention/2014/07/31/can-service-coordinators-use-coaching/
• The first-ever national service coordination webinar, The Role of the Service Coordinator in Building Relationships with Families in Early Intervention, will be held on 3/28/18 from 12-1:15 pm central. Registration is currently full, but a recorded version will be available soon on the SC resource page: http://go.illinois.edu/ServiceCoordination
• Ever wonder how the strengths & challenges of service coordination in Illinois compare to those nationally? A National Part C Service Coordination survey was done across eight (8) states with over 700 respondents.  We are excited to share the result summaries, which are as follows:
• National Survey Results (pdf)
• Illinois Survey Results (pdf)

• CFC Conferences are just around the corner - April 27^th in Effingham & May 4^th in Palos Hills. Registration coming soon!

The Illinois Service Coordination Community of Practice (IL SC CoP) and CFC SC Trainer Forum are two relatively new initiatives in Illinois. Each group meets quarterly and discussions are driven by group members.  If you want to join or learn more information about either of these groups, please contact Sarah Nichols at snichols@illinoiseitraining.org.

As Phase III, Year 2 is wrapping up, SSIP activities continue across the state.

• Local Leadership Teams (LTs) in the 3 pilot areas (Aurora, Williamson County, and East St. Louis) continue to offer professional development and focused conversations around the Child Outcomes Summary (COS) process.
• The pilot CFCs are now beginning to look at what the COS process looks like out in the field. They are piloting a checklist which will provide information about fidelity. This information, in conjunction with other evaluation data, will help with planning next steps for the COS PD in their areas.
• The next major activity in the SSIP is building capacity for the use of family-centered practices. Five of the DEC Recommended Practices will drive the majority of this work.
• A Resource Package of activities to support family engagement will be developed to support the LTs with this work.
• Members of the evaluation team recently participated in a series of SSIP webinar workshops on infrastructure improvements and practice change. Information discussed in the webinars is helping us refine our evaluation plan.
• The annual report on the SSIP is due to the Office of Special Education Programs on April 2, 2018. A draft of this report has already been reviewed by the Evaluation Team and several federal technical assistance members.  Their feedback was incorporated and the report is currently being reviewed by several EI Stakeholder groups with final comments being considered prior to the final version being sent before April 2, 2018.

In the near future, we will be examining the data we receive on teams’ fidelity to the outlined COS process, beginning the training for Local Leadership Teams on evidence-based intervention practices, and determining ways that we can evaluate our infrastructure improvement activities.

We welcome everyone’s input so if you have any comments, please email them to cguillen@illinois.edu.

To view upcoming events sponsored by EITP only, please visit http://go.illinois.edu/EITPevents.

For a list of online trainings offered by EITP, please visit our EITP Online Events Calendar.

For a list of events sponsored by other entities (non-EITP events), please see the Non-EITP Events Calendar.