Legal Rights of Children with Epilepsy in School & Child Care

Dispute Resolution and Legal Remedies
delegability or non-delegability of the medication administration and what the
implications are for staffing in the school Lizzie attends.
Case Scenario 2 — Restraint/Behavior Intervention/Safety Issues
Amalie is a seventeen-year-old nonverbal young woman with an intractable seizure
disorder, mental retardation and aggressive behaviors (due to a chromosomal disorder).
She attends Edgeview Falls, a public separate special education school. She has drop
seizures, absence seizures and tonic-clonic seizures. She also engages in avoidance
behavior in which she will drop to the floor to avoid demands being made on her. The
school’s behavior specialist has developed the plan based on a one-hour observation of
Amalie and a cursory review of her records. He did not speak with Amalie’s parents, the
school nurse or Amalie’s doctors; nor did he review her medications or their side effects.
He designed a behavior intervention plan that includes keeping Amalie in her classroom
chair by using a seatbelt during instructional periods. He tells Amalie’s parents that the
seatbelt is for safety reasons so that Amalie will not fall from her chair during a seizure.
On community outings, the IEP team wants to use a leash with Amalie, as well as have
her be supported by two staff. The alternative they present to Amalie’s parents is to have
Amalie travel by wheelchair. Amalie has sustained a number of injuries in the classroom,
some requiring stitches, by falling against sharp furniture corners during seizures. Her
parents sought advocacy assistance, and efforts were made to follow the strategy outlined
in Chapter 6. After a series of IEP meetings, some improvements were made in Amalie’s
situation; no leash or wheelchair is being used on community outings, and the classroom
furniture has been padded, but little else has been done to improve the quality of her
program, despite repeated promises from school staff and area administrators, and her
parents are feeling desperate.
Discussion and Advocacy Strategy: Amalie does not have a lot of time left in the
education system. The use of restraint and her lack of meaningful communication add
more urgency to her situation. This is a case in which parents may wish to proceed to due
process without asking for mediation. They can choose to attend a resolution session or
try to waive it if the school system agrees; whether a resolution session has a chance of
being successful depends on who is in attendance and how serious the parties are about
resolving the matter. The following advocacy strategy may be helpful to Amalie’s parents
and their attorney:
1) Identify the issues for the due process hearing. There are a number of issues in
this case. Prioritize the issues to be addressed. Issues of significance may be the
use of restraint, the failure to conduct an appropriate functional behavioral
assessment and develop an appropriate behavioral intervention plan, the failure to
conduct an assistive technology assessment and provide appropriate augmentative
communication devices and services, and the failure to develop an appropriate
health care plan addressing seizures, medications, side effects, impact on
education, and needed services and accommodations. Any other issues probably
fall within these bigger categories.
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