Related Services

Where Related Services shows up in your IEP

These sit in the same services table as special education, but on rows of their own — therapy, counseling, nursing, transportation — each with a provider type, a frequency and a location. A service belongs there when your child needs it to benefit from special education, so every row should trace back to something written in present levels.

What to ask at the meeting

1. Which need in the present levels does each of these rows answer?
2. What does as needed mean in practice, and who decides when it is needed?
3. How do these providers share what they see with the classroom teacher?

Red flags

• A row reads as needed with no minimum frequency attached to it anywhere.
• Transportation is assumed rather than written down, though the regular bus will not work.
• A therapy row survives from an older IEP with no current need described for it.

Example

Dev's counseling row said as needed for two years, which in practice meant a check-in whenever someone remembered. His mother asked for a floor instead. The team wrote twenty minutes weekly with a named social worker, and the quarterly report finally had something to report against — the first steady picture anyone had of how his week went.

Common questions