Gatekeeping Support Services In Public Education
If you’re not qualified to diagnose, then you’re not qualified to rule out either
Fellow parents, did you know?
School staff are not supposed to gate-keep access to support services in schools.
I’ve spoken with many parents who have expressed concerns about their child to the student’s classroom teacher, only to have those concerns dismissed, invalidated, or brushed aside.
This is NOT okay.
Teachers are not qualified to assess for, diagnose, or rule out any disabilities, divergent neurotypes, or diagnoses.
They can certainly provide their observations and opinion from an educator’s perspective.
Collaboration and communication between home and school is important, and teachers can offer valuable insight, and that’s where we should start.
If after discussions and attempts to work with your child’s teacher, you feel there is reason to pursue further assessments or supports, you can specifically request that your child receive assessments and services from your division’s clinicians.
Schools seem to really try to ration these limited resources because waitlists for school psychologists and other clinicians are already extremely long.
That’s not your problem, and it’s certainly not your child’s problem.
We’ve already foot the bill
Our tax dollars pay for these services, and every student needing supports has the legal and ethical right to access them.
If schools were to stop gate-keeping and would add every student who actually needs an assessment or access to supports to the wait list, then we’d have a much more accurate picture of how under-resourced our public education system really is.
Further, many schools have been pushing families to seek private assessment if they can afford it (here in Manitoba, these cost upwards of $3,000-$4,000).
We already pay for these services through our taxes, and should not be forced to pay out-of-pocket for services our children are entitled to at school.
Many schools won’t even take into account assessments and recommendations made by outside clinicians, however they are required to follow recommendations made by their own clinicians.
It’s a much bigger issue
Once again, I want to make perfectly clear that I am not blaming teachers.
Teachers’ options are heavily restricted by their administration and senior administration, oftentimes they are unable to offer more, even if they want to.
The accountability lies with our provincial government, our minister of education, and senior administrators.
The province determines how much money each division gets, and the senior administration team determines how those funds are distributed.
That said, if a teacher dismisses, invalidates, or brushes off your concerns about your child, you may wish to try the following:
- Have a meeting with the teacher, have a conversation about your concerns, and ask your child’s teacher for their observations and input.
- If your child is struggling in class, ask the teacher what you can do at home to support them.
- Make genuine efforts to put these recommendations into practice, and to work collaboratively with the classroom teacher.
If after working cooperatively with the classroom teacher, you still have concerns, approach them again.
- Let them know you’ve tried implementing their suggestions, but you still have concerns.
- At this point, you should directly ask for your child to be put on the school’s waiting list to see the division’s school psychologist (or relevant clinician).
- Check your school division’s website to see what clinical and student support services are available.
School divisions should be providing access to the following clinical and student support services:
- Resource Teacher (RT)
- Social Worker (SW)
- Guidance Counsellor (GC)
- Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP)
- Occupational Therapist (O.T.)
- School Psychologist
If after these discussions, the teacher is not following through with a referral to the school support team, here are your next steps:
- Send an email to follow up and ask for an estimated length of the waitlist (this provides a timeline as well as documentation of your requests).
- If you do not receive a satisfactory response after 3–5 business days, your next step is to contact the school principal and ask them directly for a referral to the relevant clinician.
Manitoba’s Appropriate Education Programming Act (AEP) states the following:
A principal must ensure that a pupil is assessed as soon as reasonably practicable if he or she is having difficulty meeting the expected learning outcomes.
Some school teams will deny or refuse referrals if the student is not struggling academically, however expected learning outcomes include social-emotional learning, as well as the student’s ability to meet academic expectations without significant cost to their mental health.
If a child is doing well academically, but experiencing incredible overwhelm, anxiety, pressure, stress, etc., then they are not meeting social-emotional outcomes.
Schools will try to throw out terms such as, “building resilience” and “pushing to potential” when encouraging parents to take a tough love approach and force their child to endure distressing situations in the name of having a “growth mindset”.
Bullshit.
I’m all for personal growth, folks. Sometimes children do need some encouragement to develop self-confidence and to recognize their own abilities.
And sometimes resilience is code for, “your needs are inconvenient to me, so I’m forcing you to conform to my expectations.”
We cannot stretch our boundaries unless and until we feel safe. Pushing a dysregulated child will only send them into meltdown or shutdown.
Gently pushing a child who feels safe, cared for, and supported — now, that can lead to a sense of mastery, and that’s wonderful.
Schools seem to skip the whole relationship-building, creating felt safety thing, and try to jump right to building resilience. This sets both adult and child up for trouble, and only makes the child feel less safe.
The AEP also states:
A principal must ensure that a pupil is referred for a specialized assessment if the pupil’s teacher and resource teacher, guidance counsellor or other applicable in-school personnel are
- unable to assess why the pupil is having difficulty meeting those outcomes; or
- of the opinion that differentiated instruction and adaptations are insufficient to assist the pupil in meeting those outcomes
The principal certainly cannot determine whether the resource teacher or guidance counsellor can provide adequate support if the classroom teacher won’t even acknowledge that a student is struggling.
If you’re not qualified to diagnose, then you’re not qualified to rule out either.
Dear school staff: struggling does not always mean disruptive behaviours or failing academically. A struggling student may appear “fine” on the outside, yet be experiencing significant internal stress.
“Well, how can we know, then?”
You don’t. So here’s a novel idea: Believe the student. Believe the parent. When a family is expressing concerns, they’re not doing so for shits and giggles, they’re doing so because they… *checks notes*… have concerns.
I know school staff are over-worked, under-appreciated, under-supported, and under-resourced. I do.
It’s a shitty situation for everyone, but the last people who should ever experience the ramifications of our government’s incompetence are the kids.
It shouldn’t be their problem, yet they constantly bear the burden of our mistakes.
© Jillian Enright, Neurodiversity MB
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