all right we're going to move into the transition panel now and i i do want to tell our virtual audience as well as our audience here that in addition to our lovely speakers here i have we also have some i have a whole list of information from a parent's perspective from some of the parents perspectives we didn't get a chance to have a parent on the panel tonight but i was able to gather some information via e mail from some of the parents and there's just a bulleted list of good helpful out ideas so i'll be kind of the representative for the parent piece even though i'm not even nowhere near my kids are eight months old and eight years old but i do have a freshman but not  this particular presentation or panel was set up with the intention for parents that are thinking about their children their that have special needs in high school if they're thinking about that next step which is moving on either to college either to a vocational school or either into work or whatever their next steps are  this panel was created for our audience to ask questions tonight and to get answers from our panel of experts so let's get to know our panel of experts and how about we start with you kelly is that ok so kelly i'm commission in the summer of office which covers and so i'm just going to give you guys a brief overview of what mastery hap commission is and then answer any questions that you may have so mass rehab is a state agency that provides comprehensive services to people with disabilities to assist them in obtaining or maintaining employment and hopefully to improve the overall quality of life and some of us so who can receive services so you must have a physical mental conmen like learning disability that severely limits you from keeping vocational rehabilitation is an individual based service that we provide meaning that not every person would get the same services or would be eligible for services and not that we look at each person individually so if you have an i p in school you can likely be made eligible for services and you would be referred by the school so that's how that works out in the book ation accounts are comes to the school and meets with the students while they still in school to kind of get to know the student and develop an individual plan for employment when they get ready to graduate and there are some new changes to the law that are coming out quite soon actually about the state agencies but agree have working with students whether in school and providing some more additional services that we were unable to we assist people to identify their skills and abilities we assist people to identify any common accommodations they might benefit from utilizing and we assist people with disabilities to keep employment keep their job so some of the services available through mass rehab is counseling and guidance and that's each student working with their counselor talking about what their plans their goals are for after they graduate or prior to graduation there's some new opportunities that we have some summer internships that are paid that are  yet coming out and the next couple months to be offered to high school students so that's exciting so training and education just depending on what each person's planets for after they graduate if they maybe want to get some training and something like that they want to you know do custodial work and learn how to clean in a building or that kind of thing there's a training program for that that they can do and they get job placement training after that as well so it's different trainings and education if they want to go to a community college or a state school we can assist with that and a kind of get into more to talk about that and that's the minute so there's a system of technology and services that we can help provide with if it might be you know beneficial for the student to have some kind of  assistive technology device for them to you know be able to learn better when they're in school or when they get out of school and that working there is diagnostic and aptitude testing evaluations so if someone isn't quite sure maybe they don't feel like they have a current you know evaluation done about their impairments and then we can assist with that the school does an excellent job with that but sometimes things just fall through and that might be needed and we can assist with that and we sometimes rarely do vehicle and housing modification and other service so just talk a little bit more about the training and education so sometimes people might want to get a certificate program and going right into getting a degree in school so we can assist with that there are some dollar caps with then we do have a program for that where they can get the training it's free c v s does the training and we work with them and the students get trained on how to do that so that's an example of one of the training programs they you know they do have to apply for the job interview we help them with that and most of them there is the first session they did for that program eighty percent of those clients were employed so it's a good turnout so education and college talk about that mastery have commission because we're a state agency we do partner with all the state in community colleges as in regards to tuition waivers so the cost of tuition for school that's like a thousand dollars they can get that way their mastery have client and then their fees and bucks that a lot of the money comes into we can financially assist that as well to certain dollar amount on that so that's kind of a lot about college you know we talk to students about how college is very different from high school a lot of extra time and study and they have to take initiative people are prompting them and reminding them to do their homework turn in assignments necessarily it's it's just very different so when you talk with them a lot of that that the week sometimes to assist students if they go to a private school if there's a program at that school that's not offered by the state school so can even think of on the top my head right now but if there was then we could assist them with that obviously the state sorry private schools do charge more for their tuition and fees and all that so oftentimes students you have to take out loans in addition  placement and follow up services is the other kind of route we take with students sometimes they might not be ready to jump right in a school after they graduate they might not want to go to college they might just want help getting a job so we do a number of different things around that we do we have a job in our office that we do which goes over a resume writing cover letters networking where to look for jobs how to apply for jobs because a lot of online these days so how do you navigate mine applications to follow up for that we do lots of mock interviews and practice interviewing making sure people are ready for interviews that they have clothing aware that stop so he says people at that there are community we are programmed providers that we also contract with throughout the state and they also do more of an intensive in depth job placement assistance with which a number majority of our clients utilize and it's more like a once a week meeting with the placement specialist you know you're applying for jobs together you're practicing interviews you might be going to job fairs or other events understand how this process works with mass rehab so basically you know once you make a referral or you can make a software for all the school can remember you a parent can refer you to an outside agency like the d d s developmental disability services or department of mental health can refer d c s d c s can refer so went to students referred there is a two month wait period that goes by and and that timeframe we just encourage everyone to have all their medical documentation or their p and a psyche of out from the school they have that path that ready so that when we start with them we're just ready to hit the ground running kind of thing so we would do an initial interview with them we ask them personal questions want to get to know them well and so that there's no surprises when they go in front of an employer such as you know we didn't know you had a criminal record or you know we didn't know that you wouldn't pass a drug tests or something so things like that that are sometimes people don't think about and so we talked about those things kind of get yes get those t surface and then we develop an individual plan from play men with that student what their plan might be about their vocational goal and what services are likely to benefit them and in reaching that goal and then once they've entered work whether it's part time or full time we you know check in with them regularly within those first three months and if all those wild employers happy students happy we would go ahead and close their case and they're  employment services for up to a year after their case is closed which means that we can step in and help them out with any way that they need it in order to keep the job so that kind of you know some of the high higher growing jobs faster growing jobs in the state of massachusetts our health care finance technology education and life sciences so just kind of some not all of the jobs that are out there require a bachelor's degree there's a lot of jobs that are kind of a middle skill level as well so it could be work history that you have the skills that you have attained that way or even an associate's degree and then there is this a smaller percentage percentage for people that just graduated high school and so we just want people to know that they don't have to feel like they pressured into going and getting a four year degree before they can work it's kind of are offered in high school can transfer but maybe not exactly the biggest thing to me backup so every college and university in the country that receives any type of federal funding which is pretty much all of them have to have somebody on campus who can provide services to students with disabilities some schools will have offices like like ours will and others may have a person who also functions as the dean of students also isn't located in the counseling office or something of that nature so when you're sort of thinking about college know that there is an option out there with disabilities sometimes just takes a little research on their website but it's definitely something to look into  neither your parents your teachers etc and you walk through what are the appropriate resources that the student might need and that can manifest itself into an i p or even a five a for them in college we don't know who the student is unless the student comes and talks to us so we're not going to find out if you submit information admissions we're not going to find out we need the student to make contact and it's really important that the student is the person who's making that contact and we welcome parents and families and guardians but at the end of the day we're our job is to work with the students traditionally the student is over eighteen and they're the ones that are having a relationship with and unless this student signs a waiver there's really no information that we can pass on to the parents once they get into that college environment so that's a big change and it's not uncommon for students with disabilities to choose not to come seek services that it might be the first time that they're sort of against that just because it's harder to dig a student out of the hole retroactively rather be productive so once a student comes and takes us out and meets with us the plan in terms of how to provide accommodations for them is pretty simplistic we look at sort of three pieces of evidence one is we're going to look at their diagnostic documentation so this is a piece of information that says that they have this type of disability  maybe it was done by a neuro psych college just maybe it was if it's more of a medical disability maybe it was done by a primary care physician the i e p and the five o four plans are nice and helpful but they don't really pass the mustard in terms of the long run we're looking for that diagnostic documentation so if there's an opportunity to be reevaluated while still in high school take it and the reason that i say that is because colleges and universities some are some are stricter than others in terms of when the last evaluation was done some might look sort of a common timeframe is three to five years within the last three to five years a lot of us are moving away from my and i really are not that strict in terms of when the documentation was done especially the disability sort of maintain status quo over time but if your student is it all thinking about graduate school the graduate schools themselves and the entrance exam like the g r e's and l stats and and cats so if you're considering that it's good to have that documentation done in high school part of the reason too is that once you get out of high school you all are responsible for financially paying for it it's not something that we can help out so that's a big thing the other thing that we look at is we will actually sit down and talk to the student and to the parents if the student asks the parents to join them and get to know the student and get to know you know what worked really really well in high school what didn't work so well what were some experiences that you know what types of teaching styles did they respond to ask them to tell us about their disability and so that's where it's really important for them to know  not necessarily specific diagnosis and diagnoses although that is helpful but more sort of this is when it presents itself more than other time like finals is really stressful and i start withdrawing and i have a hard time you know handling situations so will interview the student and just talk to the student and based on those types of information the documentation interviewing the student and sort of having that interaction with them then we will recommend certain accommodations for the student are very much individual and some of the more common accommodations attended revolve around exams in college a lot of professors one might have to examine the entire semester and that's it they don't have the sort of every week or every other week and that can be very stressful first student so a lot of times will do things like extra time to take your exams and that applies to quizzes and tests as well maybe they need a place where there's not so many distractions we can provide that individualized one thing that most universities and colleges do not do which is difficult for them since the disability is to excuse absences so is out due to an illness or disability it's not something that we can excuse rather it's up to the student to work the professor around what can be done to me made up remember in college a lot of times classes might meet the me meet three times a week i'm sorry but most of the time it's even less than that so missing one or two classes can be really really detrimental in terms of the long term progress of the student in terms of the types of disabilities that we work with we work under the a actually anything that limits one or more major like activity we've seen we have traditionally our numbers in higher ed tend to be very high around learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder we have seen a little bit of an increase lately in terms of mental health disability and a lot of times there's more than one disability within the student as well as chronic health situations so things like crohn's disease or diabetes or seizure epilepsy these types of things are coming to becoming more common these are all things that the university can work with a lot of times disability offices also sort of serve as referral centers most universities don't provide direct disability related tutoring rather they would refer to the tutoring for the for the entire campus and that something that the tutors are are prepared to work with one thing that they can back up or second is that the only people that know that the student has a disability the student and ourselves and if they pass a letter usually it's a combination letter to their faculty member the faculty member know that they have a disability but we never disclose what that is so that's up to the student if they want to have that conversation but it's not something that's necessary and if they feel that they need to we can happily role play those convers so we'll connect the student to tutoring services will connect the student to counseling services will connect to students in some universities ours for example we have academic coaches which work really closely with students around executive functioning scales making sure that we're getting things done on time and we're not turning things in those types of resources there are a number of colleges and universities out there that do provide sort of above and beyond types of programs where they're very directed at working with students with disabilities they might have summer programs they may have more hand holding type situations those are often a bit more expensive but they do exist and i'm happy to give you a few if you're interested in those particulars so once you meet with the student improve their accommodation it would take a letter to their professor that says you know i've met with kirsten and i get extra time on my exams and i get no taking or i i get the i get to use a service dog to class whatever the situation might be and then some as they do that the professor has to enact those accommodations legally they have to but any problems  you can always come back and we can work out the details of that but most faculty are very very supportive and very very good with the students in those accommodations be good for one semester and then they just renew them each semester going forward and it's  just carries through their entire collegiate experience trying to think of i missed anything i'd say in terms of those let me just back up there are a few things that are important to notice in terms of they're not accommodations in college so in high school students can get a modified curriculum or you know maybe a the class is expected to write a ten page paper in the student can be allowed to write an eight page paper or something of that nature in college you need to meet the same criteria as every other student in the class it's the same thing for admissions in order to be admitted to a college you need to meet that criteria the other students have so that's not something that we can change likewise we can't offer alternative assignments we typically do not do course waivers if a disability is really preventing a student from successfully completing a math or foreign language requirement we can have a discussion about media working through substitution but there's still a substitution that needs to be made it's very structured in college it's very much not likewise we can provide housing accommodations in terms of specific rooms that might be needed for a type of a disability but we're not going to be waking up the students or sort of prompting them to get going so i'm with the river financial group where a a local financial planning firm based in waltham and we do a lot of work with families that have children with disabilities and i say a lot it's probably  two to five new clients a week that we're meeting with my background so i bought myself a little bit i live in sudbury have two kids and you know one's fourteen one's eleven so transition is very much on my mind as well because my fourteen year old has autism and that's kind of how i started developing this this niche within financial planning i really notice that families who are you know walking in my shoes have a lot of different challenge going on they're dealing with school issues they're dealing with medical issues and a lot of times the financial planning the state planning although they know it has to get done at some point gets put gets kind of put on the back burner and they come to our workshops and sometimes sometimes they come over and over again and collecting information but never really execute a plan so in all cases our hope is to motivate families to actually do something and to create a plan that makes sense for them  when kids are at work rather when parents have kids that are high school that are that are transitioning that's when these types of issues kind of come to the forefront you know we find that we're meeting with more and more families who are in that you know fourteen you know twenty twenty two year old range because they simply don't know what to do next our approach is always going to be holistic based in the sense that you know we're not just going to look at the special needs plan although that's obviously very important and most of the time that's the primary reason why why clients come in but the special needs plan is always going to be connected to someone someone's other other goals and resources so common goals are things like retirement planning college planning so how do you if you're if your goal is to send your child to suffolk or another school how are you going to pay for that if your goal is to retire one day which it often is for most people you know house where is that going to come from and how are you going to retire and be able to maybe supplement some of the needs that your child has during retirement  so you know we do a lot of analysis around that simply because everyone has a limited amount of resources and if they're allocating money towards towards one goal like let's say for example you know they've been told and max and maximizing the amount they put into their four one k it probably means that they're you know underfunding something else and maybe their money is not being used in the most efficient way possible every single person that's that we've worked with has done some planning so  can even if there's not a lot of thought put into it maybe they have done something for example if you work somewhere and they offer a retirement plan and you're putting money into it without even a thought of is it enough or you know is invested the right way then you're doing some kind of retirement planning so part of our process is to you know almost to look at inventory of what somebody has done you know looking at things like their their retirement plans their savings how do they save looking at any kind of legal documents that they may already have in place you know what are the things that are going to help them get from you know where they are today to where they want to be at some time in the future so in that sense it's very similar to an ip and because ip the first step is really do to create a vision you know so what is the vision for your child you know we want to help our clients create a vision for their children and for themselves so with that in mind we spend a lot of time trying to really understand you know what are you know what is the disability of their child you know how does it impact their life you know where do they see their child in the future what types of supports are going to need to put in place so that their shot has a lifestyle that the parents want them to have and then we want to try to help families figure out if these are the these are the goals these are the types of disabilities this is the vision that we have for a child what it what are the types of funding sources that are out there that are going to help them with that so we want to you know help parents understand you know things like social security things like mass health things likes s s t o you know adult family care section eight housing so there's a lot of different types of funding out there that parents really aren't aware of that doesn't mean they're going to get it but we want to talk about it and see if those types of funding are going to be the right fit for them and then you know based on that and their goal you know we want to do some kind of analysis to figure out you know what  type of funding their child is going to need you know while they're alive and after they pass away and how's that going to impact their own planning so they get if they're if they're funding their child to a certain level during their lifetimes how's it going to impact you know that the vision that for them for themselves as well and then if that's not enough you know what can we do about it so you know again looking at the goals looking at what's important what type of vision families have for their for their children and the elsa's behind that is what we do i would say that the biggest concern that families have is housing so they really want to know or have a sense of you know where their child is go live and that's a very personal decision you know some families you know their vision is to have their child live with them forever you know others come in and you know that's not what they want so they want to maybe have their child living somewhere independently or somewhere this is some kind of a supportive living environment and you know part of that is going to be you know their vision of a part of it is what we know what are the real capabilities of that child and what kinds of supports will they need and then we can try and figure out what types of funding could possibly be available is going to be you know from d s is going to be section eight you know out of parents going to have to private pay for certain things so we get an example of that is you know we have families a command in their vision is that the live somewhere near them but have supports so you know perhaps for them the best situation is to purchase something nearby where the child can live you know with some kind of an aid and you know part of that maybe state funded or federally funded and part of that's going to be funded with with the family's resources we also want to look at you know what can go wrong you know what if one of the parents dies prematurely what if somebody needs can any kind of extended care was almost like a stress test of the plan you know everybody has a you know an idea that they want to they want to hope for the best but plan for the worst so oftentimes you know the planning we do is is based on that assumption one more thing that is that you know when once we create a plan and we give parents specific recommendations we want to work with with other advisors you know we want to make sure that you know there's there's an attorney you can do any documents that are necessary we want to work with the tax advisor if that maybe if that's important or if there is a need for that and it's very much a holistic team approach here to make sure that panel i think we're really covering the whole picture so the section that that i'm going to do and again we really did want to have a parent on the panel and we just were able to secure that for this for tonight but i have this great list that we that i'll share with you guys of some of the suggestions that parents did submit to us  just a little bit with a list and i'll go through a couple of those and we're going to open this up for humanae and we should have even though the time insists all seven fifteen we will probably have until sept right up to seven thirty  for the p t o comes in and i also just want to acknowledge john sullivan here he is one of the special ed teachers here at the high school and he's actually the answer any of those questions so i did not bring my glasses i'm so sorry but i'm going to going to let you know a few things so let's see this this came from a parent they emphasized that it was really important for the student as you had also indicated to speak with the director of disability services at the school and to make that really part of the orientation process so them in to be read through for a screen reader and other schools might do that for the student so as they were looking to different schools there was a wide variety of services for different colleges and universities same thing with the tutoring option it sounds like suffolk has that possibility but i think as you explain to sometimes you're going to get that service and sometimes you might not child has to be willing to access them and willing be willing to use them again it's going to be student driven and not parent driven and a couple of these assist pins record the computer record the professor's lectures help with no taking and then apparently can record that back to you you can plug it into your computer and  come back in real time with yeah it's pretty cool and it's not very expensive it's about one hundred dollars yeah it's amazing i'm like wow i mean whether it's a child that has services or said that some classes depending on the school university are automatically recorded and you can access them online which is very very helpful a lot of the textbooks out there are electronically and available on disability web sites and so i'm not sure if any of your two resources had that a list of that i didn't get that through the parent but it would be very helpful to have a list of disabilities websites for parents to know which ones have electronic books out there or not it should be this the school's  that see another one same thing i think you mentioned she qualified students get priority scheduling for classes they can inquire with their professors what might be the best fit with your students is the importance of self advocacy that their disability is not something that they need to high that they need to try to overcome themselves that i just part of who they are and it should be recognised and supported and the biggest person that should support that is the student themselves so against a lot of what you had recommended  this parent did say that one parent said that she wished that her son or daughter would have used the disability support from the beginning and not midway through so i think it i think that's the biggest one of the biggest things from parent perspective if you can encourage your students to really start instead of like you mentioned when you first walked in you know towards the end of the school year here and you know getting brand new students and i can see where that will be hard when the student wants to do it all by themselves let's see and there's a couple of just a couple of beers a couple of information for you some  parents mentioned curry college has some comprehensive services northeastern is known for their disability services us lol is known and of course we have separate university  so that's on the list just so you know is that does an outstanding job so those are a couple of things for our audience their parents an audience to know that as you're looking on as you're planning level of ability or disability is don't be shy about it that i think that was kind of the biggest thing out of all the bullet points and i'm there's probably a few more but i am going to stop here because i conscious of our time and i do want parents to really ask their questions and get that answered so can we open it up to the audience and i'm sure you guys have some questions out there  i had a ton of questions it's coming up for me but you guys  hope it's it's tough and i'll just mention this because i've actually as the much special education co chair because i put together a lot of these presentations i go to a lot of and even though it may not be my child  so i've got a ways to go but i cannot even begin to tell you how much the financial pieces that i've heard over the years how much or how important it is to to start even if even if your child you don't know they're pretty particular future get the information you know get it ready get it perfect get it ready so you have your arm or you have your suitcase full  and you're ready to go to to to get things prepared so it's going to add to that i should mention that when i was speaking about nine out of ten if not more parents that come in uncertain about the future you know i'm uncertain you know i don't know where my son's going to be in two years or five years and never never mind ten or fifteen years but it's just important to have some kind of a plan and put in place based on whatever whatever information you know today and based on your goals and make sure it has a lot of flexibility because things are going to change you know with your family with with your son you know and of course the market taxes and all that but i'm just having some kind of a a plan maybe it's not the best one maybe it's not doesn't answer all the questions is better than not how we want to get there frankly gives you a lot of peace of mind that ok we got something and we know that maybe this w e that way but something's in place you know my take on work is there a particular age that they should they should start like software or work to lose their yeah fourteen and the other thing too that might help motivate your son is he may have  an area of interest to something that really he really enjoys college is a way for him to expand upon that and to take classes that excite him you know if he could just sort of get through the next year or so he has that get access to what arlington's doing what what all the different towns surrounding and i also am on a website from the different of the different agencies as well so a lot like you're getting just a snippet like the bare minimum of what each of these services are but i can tell you like each one of these wonderful speakers have an entire presentations that would go into more depth and detail and so if you're on our website or if you're on the belmont special education yahoo jocking give you at the end i forward all that stuff o n to to parents just so that you can pick and choose you know you might hop over are going to get you know wall ham or whatever because these guys might be there giving a presentation you know  so that's another way to to to get a lot of different information it's kind of overwhelming at times i have to admit but if you're if you're you know planning for the future it's it's really useful sometimes it's worth it to wade through it all y question wow look at that my friends were going to end right on time our morning let me just see if i missed any really cool bullets oh i here's another did i question and i'm i'm i would like i mentioned before each one of them have their own presentation but just to hone in on the financial piece i was blown away i've sat through two or three financial presentations whether it was these guys or at another financial planning services and my kids eight years old i had no idea the legal aspects of what you really have to know how to take care of yourself financially so that you're not sucked dry because of the disability that of your child and the financial planning groups can help you adjust for work with your money so that you are not stuck in that category but like some like you mentioned you got a start of age fourteen because things need to be in place before recommended things in place by age sixty i write about some of those so if you haven't had an opportunity to really get in there and work on the financial plan for yourself and your child's disability do that asap because if you know it'll help you any other last minute represent which is war path or belmont special education political activist organization we are right on the belmont public school's website so all you have to  but where we're going to try to get that the hooked up and linked up for you and in that section you can sign up to be yahoo group and i'll just put a plug in right now because i can in the month of may may to tour bus driver anybody that helps your child and has gone above and beyond for your child whether they're in high school elementary preschool whether they're in a lab collaborative program where they're outsourced like my daughter she goes to a different school but we're part of belmont if there is anybody out there that has gone above and beyond we highly recommend that you submit an award and it's on that very same website very easy to do it's a real quick just click it's at the right you corner as you go to our page and you can submit as many awards that you would like submit anybody that you submit an award for will get an award that's how it works it is the most lovely event that we have every year it's on may twenty seventh usually the superintendent becomes the principals  e read what your lovely comments are for that for that particular teacher student teacher aide whoever you're giving the award to and if you're a president you get to take the picture with that award that that nominee that you nominated and i can't begin to tell you first of all what a moving event it is but also it's really great for the teachers that work so hard in this area sometimes other areas of the school don't necessarily focus on special education and so this is an opportunity for us as parents to really honor the people that do so much for our kids so i will i will definitely i like to our virtual audience to know about that are right laughs anything when over about three minutes  to close this thank you panel for making yourselves available for us tonight thank you audience for coming jon thank you for setting this up this is excellent i think we should try to do this every year because i think it's really needed  and thank you julie and the belmont media center for videotaping this information because i can tell you what i have had people all the way from i think it's in westville pac say can we go to your web site and look at your information so this is a great service that is being provided