Supporting and Accommodating Students with Special Health Care Needs

COVID-19 brought the health needs of many students the forefront. This book provides guidance to educators, school nurses, and healthcare providers to assist in the development of legally defensible IEPs for all students, particularly those with a known or suspected history of health care needs.

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Schools are increasingly responding to the impact and prevalence of special health care needs among children and youth. COVID-19 brought the health needs of many students to the forefront. Now more than ever, it is crucial to for educators to plan for working with students with health needs. Many of these students with health needs are eligible for special education and related services and will need programming appropriate to address their unique needs. Further, school teams and special education personnel must continually ensure that goals and services within an IEP consider the student’s individual circumstances and impact on functioning. This book will provide strategies for supporting students with health care needs throughout their education, including referral, family engagement, report writing, IEP design, and implementation. Fortunately, school teams can apply many components of a health-care needs approach to developing IEPs, regardless of the concern or the existence of a medical history.

This book provides guidance to educators to assist in the development of legally defensible IEP’s for all students, particularly those with a known or suspected history of health care needs. Specifically, the book will help:



Provide a clear description of the impact of adversity and health-care needs on student functioning, particularly for students with disabilities.
Describe how symptoms of health-care needs map onto existing disability categories within IDEA.
Apply a supportive approach to family engagement, assessment, and report writing.
Take a different approach to PLAAFPs.
Establish goals that are legally defensible and are written in light of the child’s circumstances, viewing behavioral concerns as a skill deficit rather than purely a performance deficit.

Beyond the objectives described above, the information is particularly valuable given ongoing state and local legislation mandating schools become more aware of students with health-care needs and apply those approaches to all aspects of our work in schools (e.g., interactions, discipline, interventions). Despite the significant increase in recognizing the impact of students with health care needs, few books have operationalized that to the various components of service delivery. This book is the first of its kind in operationalizing a health care informed approach to IEP development.