Filled with strategies, and resources, this book uses the author's groundbreaking research about successful adults with learning disabilities, to promote self-advocacy. This work is brimming with useful and practical information. It is easily understood and embraced by students with learning disabilities, their parents, guidance counselors, and stakeholders in the fields of both higher and special education.

Aimed at parents of and advocates for special needs children, explains how to develop a relationship with a school, monitor a child's progress, understand relevant legislation, and document correspondence and conversations.

Disability law can be complex and intimidating, so how can concerned parents use it to ensure their child with a disability receives the appropriate education they are legally entitled to? A Guide to Special Education Advocacy gives strategies for advocating for better provision of special education in schools. Despite the many services and accommodations that have been made for students with disabilities, such as the use of Braille or providing specialized education in a regular or special classroom, many children with disabilities do not get the services they need and are not placed in appropriate programs or settings. Because of this, the perception of disability often remains unchanged. Matthew Cohen's insightful manual gives a practical vision of how a parent or a professional can become an advocate to achieve a more inclusive and rewarding education for the child with a disability. This book will provide parents, people with disabilities, professionals and clinicians thinking about special education advocacy with an overview of current disability law and how it works, identifying practical ways for building positive and effective relationships with schools.

Volume numbers determined from Scope of the guidelines, p. 12-13.

This book presents an examination of the historical, legal and philosophical contexts within which advocacy services have developed. It discusses the professional and practical issues and problems confronting those running and using advocacy services, the role of advocacy, and advocacy with families and people with communication difficulties.

How do people with the label of learning difficulties challenge disabling environments?* What role can professionals play in supporting such challenges?* How do self-advocacy groups contribute to disability politics and the development of theories of disability?This timely book sets out to answer these questions for students, teachers and practitioners working in the field. It examines self-advocacy in the lives of people with learning difficulties. The term 'learning difficulties' is used to describe people who have been labelled at some point in their lives as requiring specialist 'mental handicap services'. Learning difficulties is preferred over other synonyms such as mental handicap, mental impairment or learning disabilities, because it is the term preferred by many in the self-advocacy movement (the focus of this book).Hitherto, a number of books have introduced and examined the notion of self-advocacy. This volume goes beyond these studies to offer an appraisal of self-advocacy in the lives of people with learning difficulties that is grounded in their own experiences. It redresses the dominant focus on learning difficulties as pathology or tragedy, highlighting the ways in which people so-labelled are fighting for their own human rights in a disabling society through their involvement in self-advocacy groups. It outlines a number of lessons for supporters, policy makers, professionals and service providers in relation to the resilience of self-advocates with learning difficulties and gives examples of good practice.

Professors Colker and Waterstone, and the eight contributors to discrete chapters of Special Education Advocacy, have collaborated to try to provide students and lawyers with the basic tools they need to be effective advocates in educational cases involving children with disabilities. Special Education Advocacy is designed to enhance the knowledge and skills of special education advocates. By using examples and simulations based on real cases, the authors and contributors hope to illuminate the major principles that are important to successful advocacy on behalf of children with disabilities. A comprehensive Teacher's Manual is available to professors.