Our friends at the West Essex SEPAC are having presentation about College life for student with Disabilities on November 10, 2015 and they have kindly extended an invitation to Bloomfield SEPAC members to attend. Please RSVP by November 6th below if you wish to attend this meeting.
From Donna Leedy about the DCF Regional School Open House:
“On Wednesday,October 21, 2015 the DCF Regional School of Essex County Newark Campus will be holding an open house to introduce parents to the school. There will also be very informative representatives from various groups such as the commission for the blind, Medicaid, family support, etc. This will be a great opportunity to meet parents in our special needs community and gain knowledge to advocate for your child. Please put the date aside and bring a friend.
Our September SEPAC Meeting raised a number of issues that our member parents felt are priorities. One of those was a lack of social skill curriculum for our children. Superintendent Salvatore Goncalves expressed great interest in addressing this issue and asked what the schools might do to help our children and parents to improve the social skills for special education students.
A SEPAC Parent suggested that we have assignments or ideas dealing with social skills that our children would receive and then parents could follow through on these assignments with the children at home as well.
Bloomfield Schools Special Services Director Linda Colucci has organized some social skills training in response to these issues and the Special Services Division will be holding two training workshops for parents about Social Skills and Play Skills. The first session (Pre-K – Elementary levels) is scheduled for Monday, October 19, 2015 at the Bloomfield High School Media Center/Library from 6:00 – 8:30 P.M.
There will be a second session for Middle School – High School levels held in December.
ASAH is a New Jersey based non-profit organization for Special Needs Students and their parents, They provide a helpful web resource which is currently featuring a series of short videos that can give you some guidance about becoming an advocate for your special needs child. Have a look. See what you think?