The importance of rational policy analysis for occupational therapists

The OT Capital Briefing in the November 7, 2016 OT Practice analyzes two Supreme Court cases that are summarized together as follows:If the Supreme Court finds in favor of the families in both cases, the expertise occupational therapy practitioners provide will be more important than ever to ensure students with disabilities receive a meaningful education, and that schools fully comply with the ADA and Section 504.This is a confusing summary because neither case has anything to do with OT specifically and in fact if the Supreme Court finds in favor of the families there may be unintended consequences that are damaging.In the first case,Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District, the issue of concern has to do with what constitutes FAPE, or a free appropriate public education.  In this case the parents removed their child from school because they believed that his progress was insufficient as it relates to his autism condition.  The enrolled him in a private school instead and are seeking compensation to pay for that since they allege that the school did not provide FAPE.The school rebutted that it was their responsibility to provide a ' non-trivial ' educational benefit and various courts have indicated that the benefit has to be more than ' trivial ' and at least ' substantial. '  This is the nut of this case - what exactly constitutes ' appropriate? '  It is a challenging standard and a fair analysis probably falls somewhere in the middle.A biased analy...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - Category: Occupational Health Tags: Disability rights OT practice school-based practice Source Type: blogs