A Comprehensive Guide for Parents and Caregivers As any parent or caregiver of an individual with developmental disabilities can tell you, planning for the future of an adult with intellectual disabilities, Cerebral Palsy, severe autism, or another such condition requires hard work and good advice. While complete independence and self-reliance is out of reach for many adults with developmental disabilities, a productive, stable, and enjoyable life is certainly possible. But government and private support for parents and disabled individualsis scattered and difficult to negotiate. This book is a comprehensive guide to resources you can use to help an adult child or other individual with developmental disabilities for whom you care. The book begins by assessing the quality of life of the adult with a disability. It offers a wealth of suggestions for making that person's life even better. The book then focuses on long-term planning for the individual with a disability and helps answer the question, Who will take care of my child after I'm gone? Learn effective ways to: Assess a disabled individual's strengths and need for support services Develop a plan to for building a busy and productive life Locate good housing and employment opportunities Gather a supportive team of caregivers Advocate for a disabled individual with community agencies

Thought-provoking, well-written, and offering a range of fresh and sometimes challenging perspectives, Planning and Support should be essential reading for people working in the field of learning disabilities. Highly recommended.' - Involve Magazine The authors outline the skills needed and common issues in case management practice across a range of people with different disabilities at different stages of their life. Emphasising the importance of taking a rights-based approach to supporting people with learning disabilities, the authors argue that effective case management needs to be individualised and carried out in partnership with the individual and their family in order to draw up a lifestyle plan that meets their many needs, including employment, education, vocational training, therapy and behaviour support. The book includes chapters on inter-agency and cross-sector negotiation and collaboration, balancing rights and protection, listening to individuals and families, communication, optimising health outcomes, approaches to behaviour support, ethical decision-making and reflective supervision, and the text is complemented by case studies throughout. An essential reference for practitioners, the book is also an invaluable guide for policy makers, researchers and students, nurses, carers, and people with intellectual disabilities and their families.

This excellent, informative and well presented, a book provides the reader with fourteen edited chapters covering an area of policy and practice that is quite specific but will inform anyone interested in the development of a service user participation ethos in adult social care. It is a book that is relevant to managers and practitioners, both as students and qualified professionals, as well as academics. Care management is now well established in the everyday practice of predominantly statutory organisations. This book revisits the principles of this method of assessing and planning the care needs of adult service users, and introduces Person Centred Planning (PCP) as a suitable method for ensuring that much of the empowerment rhetoric care management is actually realised.' - British Journal of Social Work 'Part of the attraction of this book is its strong practice component. This is applicable to the different professionals working with people with learning disabilities, in whatever their service configuration. For students, the book will also provide a good introduction to the impact of person centred planning and its connections to a long history of similar initiatives.' - Journal of Interprofessional Care 'This book is a stimulating and challenging read of those working in service development generally, as well as learning disability services. There is a potential broad care management readership that might also find this relevant and interesting.' - Journal of Interprofessional Care 'This is an important book. It brings together chapters by many of the foremost researchers and practitioners in person centred planning. The book contains many ideas for taking the PCP process to a higher level of sophistication to really underpin the future development of appropriate and effective services.' - Community Living 'This book will help social workers to reconnect with the core values of their profession and to challenge institutionalised policies and practices. It has proven to be a valuable teaching resource and whilst its focus is on people with learning disabilities, the principles of PCP that it raises are relevant to any service user group and social work arena. Highly recommended.' - Professional Social Work 'There are many important issues facing the care management system today in the light of person-centred planning and approaches, and you would be hard-pressed to find a better collection of insightful and radical thinkers in this area than those featured here. It asks hard questions, and challenges the professional to adopt more inclusive and accessible work practices. Wherever you work in the field of learning difficulties you should read this book carefully and aim to put "person-centeredness" at the core of your practice.' - Community Care This timely book provides a reflective analysis of person centred planning for people with learning disabilities, complementing policy initiatives that focus on individualised planning and service user involvement. Drawing on practical experience and research findings, the contributors explore policy and practice issues, including: * advocacy and empowerment * risk management and adult protection * inter-agency and inter-professional working * ethnicity and culture * de-institutionalisation. Vivid case studies illustrate best practice in person centred planning, and the authors offer a rich variety of ideas for increasing the participation, self-esteem and quality of life of people with learning disabilities. This practical and accessible text is an invaluable guide for policy makers, carers and social work managers, academics and students.

Children living in poverty are more likely to have mental health problems, and their conditions are more likely to be severe. Of the approximately 1.3 million children who were recipients of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) disability benefits in 2013, about 50% were disabled primarily due to a mental disorder. An increase in the number of children who are recipients of SSI benefits due to mental disorders has been observed through several decades of the program beginning in 1985 and continuing through 2010. Nevertheless, less than 1% of children in the United States are recipients of SSI disability benefits for a mental disorder. At the request of the Social Security Administration, Mental Disorders and Disability Among Low-Income Children compares national trends in the number of children with mental disorders with the trends in the number of children receiving benefits from the SSI program, and describes the possible factors that may contribute to any differences between the two groups. This report provides an overview of the current status of the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders, and the levels of impairment in the U.S. population under age 18. The report focuses on 6 mental disorders, chosen due to their prevalence and the severity of disability attributed to those disorders within the SSI disability program: attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder/conduct disorder, autism spectrum disorder, intellectual disability, learning disabilities, and mood disorders. While this report is not a comprehensive discussion of these disorders, Mental Disorders and Disability Among Low-Income Children provides the best currently available information regarding demographics, diagnosis, treatment, and expectations for the disorder time course - both the natural course and under treatment.

"I wish I had this book when I started teaching! Every teacher starts out with an empty bag of tricks; it is nice to peek into someone′s bag!" —Nicole Guyon, Special Education Teacher Westerly School Department, Cranston, RI Classroom-tested strategies that help students with learning disabilities succeed! Teachers are often challenged to help students with learning disabilities reach their full academic potential. Written with humor and empathy, this engaging book offers a straightforward approach to skillful teaching of students with learning disabilities. Developed for K–12 general and special education classrooms, this resource draws on the author′s 30 years of teaching experience to help teachers gain a greater understanding of students′ learning differences and meet individual needs. Strategies are organized by skills—including reading, writing, math, organization, attention, and test-taking—helping teachers quickly identify the best techniques for assisting each student and encouraging independent learning. Readers will find: More than 100 practical strategies, interventions, and activities that build students′ academic abilities Recommendations on appropriate accommodations, assessment techniques, and family communication Support for complying with recent federal mandates related to learning disabilities, including the ADA, Section 504, and the reauthorization of IDEA 2004 Helpful guidance and stories from the author′s own classroom experiences Ready-to-use tools, forms, and guides Discover innovative, easy-to-implement teaching methods that overcome barriers to learning and help students with special needs thrive in your classroom.

This book is a pictorial version on death and loss, designed for people with learning disabilities.