The paper trail: creating documents

What Documents Should You Create?

Why is it important to create documents? One reason is that you may have to tell your child's story to another person -- an evaluator, an advocate or lawyer, or a hearing officer -- in order to get help. Documenting events as they occur will help you tell the story accurately. A second reason is that documents can help clarify understandings you reach with people -- particularly with service providers or school administrators. A third reason is that documents that are written when something happens support you when you need to prove that the event happened the way you say it happened.

Keep a Journal

It can take years for parents to realize that they should have kept better notes of meetings, telephone calls, and important events in their child's educational career. If your young child has a disability in need of special education, get ahead of the game by developing this habit now.

Your notes may be important later when you need an accurate description of what key people said at a CCC meeting, at a parent meeting, or in an evaluator's office.

Some parents keep a journal with dates, short descriptions of events or conversations, and the names of people who were involved. This doesn't mean you need to include every tiny detail of your child's life, but a well-kept journal can help you explain to others (or to yourself) how you got to the current situation.

Try to record these events:

• Dates of meetings with school personnel
• Dates you received key documents (such as notices of CCC meetings)
• Dates you sent or delivered key documents
• Dates you gave school personnel important information (such as "1/7/99: Told Mary's teacher
• hat she'd been spending three hours every night trying to do 15-minute math assignments").
• Dates on which your child was suspended or disciplined

Create Agreements

Some documents are designed to record understandings reached with others. The most formal example of this is a contract signed by the parties who agree to its terms. (Note: An IEP is really a contract. It records an agreement reached between parents and school systems that governs: 1) the types of services to be delivered to a child for a specific period of time; 2) the location of those services; and 3) the identity of service providers. It's signed by each party.

Even without an "official" agreement, you can create your own document to help prove that an understanding was reached. Here's an example:

Your special education director tells you that the school system will hire an expert on inclusion techniques. You'll be given the chance to meet with the expert about your child. Follow up this conversation with a friendly letter to the director. In the letter, thank her for taking the time to discuss your concerns about the classroom, and describe your understanding of the steps she promised to take. End your letter by asking the director to respond immediately if you have misunderstood anything.

This letter may not "prove" that the director said what you claim she said, but if she doesn't send back a response, there's an implication that she did say those things.

Other Documents

There may be other documents that can help your child. Has your child been tested repeatedly over the years, with steadily declining results? You may want to create a chart of test results to focus the CCC on that history.

Have the people who work with your behaviorally-involved child wondered what precipitates his aggressive outbursts? Keep a record of the things that are said and done immediately before such explosions -- whether witnessed by you or told to you. You may be able to solve the mystery, and focus your child's service providers on developing a plan to work with these behaviors.

from Wrightslaw by Robert K. Crabtree