Presentation by: Rochelle Picardo, Laurie Ford
Session: C | Time: 10:05AM – 10:45AM | Location: Room 204A
As of the 2011 census, there were 47,855 children and youth in foster care in Canada. While Canadian statistics regarding the special educational needs of this population are unavailable, other research suggests a high prevalence of special educational needs among children and youth in care due to exposure to multiple biological and psychosocial risk factors for developmental delays and psychopathology (Oswald, Heil, & Goldbeck, 2010). For all children, and perhaps especially those receiving special educational services, parent involvement is important to their schooling experiences (Duchnowski et al., 2012; Fan & Chen, 2001).
Advocacy is a type of parent involvement especially important to children with special needs to ensure the receipt of the best possible services (Hess, Molina, & Kozleski, 2006). Although the term “advocacy” is seldom used in special needs legislature such as IDEA (Trainor, 2010) and the BC Special Education Policy manual, the role of the parent as specified by these documents describes similar actions to those described in definitions of advocacy. While biological parents of children with special needs often face barriers to advocacy (e.g., Fitzgerald & Watkins, 2006; Garcia, Perez, & Ortiz, 2000), foster parents in BC may face these barriers in addition to ones imposed by the rules of the Ministry of Child and Family Development. While foster parents can attend parent-teacher conferences and other school events if specified in their plan of care, they are not permitted to make special educational decisions for the child in their care. Rather, in BC, these decisions are made by a social worker, ideally after consulting the child in care, their foster parents, and their biological parents.
Critical to an understanding of the school experiences of children in care with special educational needs, is an understanding of how their caregivers engage with schools. In this investigation, we examine the experiences of school involvement and advocacy from the perspective of caregivers who foster children with special educational needs. The opportunity to engage in dialogue with participants at the IOP will support a better understanding of the educational experiences of students in foster care.
Abstract: 600