cohernece

Collaborative Work in Action

Randa Sfeir

Walden University

Collaborative Work in Action

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) considers learners with disabilities in their action plan to ensure that learners access education effortlessly (Parsons, 2017). Special education services see the provision of groundwork to facilitate quality and quantity education for disabled students, particularly in public schools. Furthermore, a collaboration action plan will provide a setting for change in the education arena for students with disabilities. The ARD or IEP Committee has to address the students’ individualized education plan to include post-secondary education, vocational education, integrated employment, continued adult education, independent and community living. Postsecondary education is a primary transition goal for the majority of secondary school students with disabilities, and completion of postsecondary education meaningfully improves an individual’s chances of securing meaningful employment and other positive adult outcomes ( Talapatra, Roach, Varjas, Houchins, and Crimmins, 2018). IDEA (2004) requires schools to invite participating agencies to the ARD meetings and makes sure all services deemed necessary provided (Povenmire-Kirk, Diegelmann, Test, Aspel, and Everson, 2015).

A meeting scheduled to evaluate the model CIRCLES introduced previously in an informative session and currently implemented as a transition-planning service delivery model. It designed to lead schools in implementing interagency collaboration at three teams, including Community Team (CT), School Team (ST), and the IEP team, concentrating on student involvement and leadership throughout the process.

Summary of the Meeting

The school-level team is composed of secondary school administrators, two counselors, two special and general education representatives from the secondary schools, the special education director, diagnosticians, Texas Workforce representative, and the transition specialists. During the meeting segment with my team members, we were able to table several issues that tend to affect the students with disabilities post-secondary issues. One of the primary concerns was providing each student with access to an array of representatives from community agencies and writing the IEP with transition goals. The discussion was about the post-school outcomes in which the students with disabilities still consistently experience poor results in the area of education, employment, and independent living compared to their peers without disabilities (Povenmire-Kirk et al. ,2017). We were able to discuss the various strategies and measures which are needed to be put in place to address these problems. Providing employment opportunities to such individuals will help eliminate the issue of over-dependency on their family members and the entire state at large. Employment will help students to earn their respective incomes, and thus they can meet their day to day requirements. The CIRCLES program, therefore, aims at transforming the lives of students with disabilities right from high school to adult life. Various students have various strengths in different fields of operation; thus, it aims at nurturing the skills and competence that numerous students with disabilities have to prepare them for a greater tomorrow.

As team collaboration, we focused on the Individualized Transition Plan (ITP) as a program to foresee the success and employment connection to learners with special needs after the post-secondary education. Also, the team reviewed the CIRCLES Community Level and IEP Teams. To ensure collective and all-inclusive team collaboration, we implemented (Fullan, M., & Quinn, J, 2016) collaborative approach, in particularly –Learning Leadership. From the creation of cultural growth, we organized the learning leadership where form the meeting, we established that leaders, teachers, and conditional peers organization of the work collectively improve learners learning process. The team used the Ontario approach, which is based on collaborative inquiry that involves new ways of working together (Fullan and Quinn, 2016). The four essential steps were used to assess the program, plan the next level where we provide student access to various representatives from community agencies, write IEP including transition component, and make sure to get inputs from students and parents for the transition planning process. Then act step is when problems arise, the team need to find solutions. The last step is to reflect on the success of the transition services to young adults with disabilities.

Strength and Need of the program

The assessment from the team established that the CIRCLES program portrays far-reaching outcomes for the students. The advantage of CIRCLES is that it empowered students and their families. The program equipped them with information about the agencies. The agencies helped the students and families understand processes and procedures, including eligibility requirements and how to apply for services (Povenmire-Kirk et al. ,2017). The students will have frequent opportunity to exhibit self-determination skills at school and their participation in their IEP meetings. A strength of the program is networking and collaboration between agencies and school personnel, discussing how agencies could work together to assist students, and share agency information about available community services.

The needs for the program are awareness between agencies and school staff and preparing students and families for the CIRCLES and transition meetings. They include the level of participation and agency assessment. There was no signature for the applicant in the segment on participation steps, and there was no amount of attendance. Guardians and parents did not attend most of the meetings.

Ongoing Program Evaluation

The following steps will be taken to ensure continuity in program evaluation.

· Check Transition goals and objectives for each student and follow up after the transition.

· Administrative support for transition

· Incorporating the use of a variety of funding sources

· Conducting agency meetings with both the family and the students

· Ensure proper training of all stakeholders on CIRCLES, including the families and students.

Environmental and Program Data

To ensure effective sharing of both the program and environment data with the pertinent stakeholders, we need to formulate a system that provides an update to each stakeholder in case of an amendment to the school and district policies.

From the complete assessment of the program, data channel to pertinent stakeholders is vital; thus, continuity in the evaluation was a matter of concern to the team during the meeting. Sharing of data is one fundamental aspect of the program that the team collaboratively agreed upon during the session. According to (Fullan, M., & Quinn, J, 2016), clarity of strategy is a cornerstone in the sharing of information with the pertinent stakeholders. Nevertheless, there is a need to ensure that various meetings will be carried out about the system update (Fullan, 2016). This will provide aid in ensuring that all the stakeholders in the organization are well aware of the current status of the program and environmental data. Updating pertinent stakeholders will help in ensuring that the formulation process, amendment process, and the implementation process experiences a smooth workflow because there will be effective coordination among these stakeholders.

Demonstrating school practices that positively impact areas of employment and postsecondary education would provide valuable information for planning programs for students with disabilities. The team members concluded that CIRCLES would continue to help the students with disabilities have a more significant opportunity to practice and demonstrate self-determination skills and be more involved in their transition meetings.

References

Fullan, M. (2016). Professional culture and educational change. School Psychology Review,

25(4), 496-500.

Fullan, M. (2017). Leading in a culture of change. John Wiley & Sons.

Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004, 20 U.S.C. §1400 et seq.

(2004).

Kauffman, J. M., Hallahan, D. P., Pullen, P. C., & Badar, J. (2018). Special education: What it is

And why we need it. Routledge

Parsons S. (2017). Three Essays on Special Education Placement in Early Childhood and K-12

Education. Retrieved from https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/62333/research.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Povenmire-Kirk, T. Diegelmann, K.M., Test, D.W., Aspel, N., and Everson, J.M. (2015).

CIRCLES: An Implementation Guide. Retrieved from

https://circles.uncc.edu/

Povenmire-Kirka, T., Diegelmanna, K., Crumps, K., Schnorr, C., Testa, D., Flowers, C. and

Aspela, A. (2017). Implementing CIRCLES: A new model for interagency collaboration in

transition planning. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation 42, 51–65

DOI:10.3233/JVR-140723

Talapatra, D., Roach, T., Varjas, K., Houchins, D., and Crimmins, D. (2018). Transition services

For students with intellectual disabilities: School psychologists’perceptions. Psychology in

the Schools, 56, 56-78.

Appendix C

Action Plan Title Collaboration between schools and agencies
Program Goal · The goal is to achieve writing IEP including Transition Component · Provides student access to various representatives from community agencies · Effectively utilized the outcomes to offer assistance and their parents to develop a positive future.
Implementation	Evaluation-Updates
Action Steps to Complete	When	When By Whom	Resources: What Is Needed for This to Happen?	Progress Notes
Follow student IEP /transition goals and objectives.	Every 4 weeks/ after implementation	IEP team	Questionnaires forms /CIRCLES
administrative support for transition	After the follow-up	School Adminstrators/Transition specialist	Identify community resources Develop & update interagency service agreements Coordinate staff development
using a variety of funding sources,	During the implementation phase	Stakeholders	Having different funding sources
agency meetings with students and families,	Before the introduction of the program	Various agency representatives	A selected area where all the parties can coverage /use List of community agencies
training students and families plus school staff on CIRCLES	During the implementation process	Trainers from the agency	Training appliances /use