PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELING AS PART OF THE I.E.P.
By Robert B. Cormany, Executive Director
The following comments come from a teleconference held on January 15, 2004, to address the state's
corrective action plan as required by the U. S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs
(OSEP). Among the eleven citations issued against Pennsylvania was one that read as follows:
"OSEP found that interview data from certain Local Education Agencies (LEAs) indicated that
psychological counseling services (including crisis intervention and behavior management) are not considered a
related service and are not included on the child’s IEP, regardless of need. OSEP also reported that in some instances
if children with disabilities need counseling services, they are referred to a mental health facility/agency outside the
school district and that this service is billed to the parent’s insurance provider. Transportation to these services was
not being provided at LEA expense. OSEP concluded Pennsylvania did not ensure that all children with disabilities
who require psychological counseling to benefit from special education are provided with this service in accordance
with an appropriate IEP.”
As a result, each district will be required to have someone trained to recognize the need for psychological
counseling services and develop an appropriate continuum of services to meet those needs. Psychological counseling
as defined by OSEP can be performed by properly trained counselors, psychologists or social workers.
Screening and Referral Measures
The first point I would like to discuss concerns the screening and referral measures commonly available to
Local Education Agencies. Among the programs that already exist in virtually every LEA for the initial screening and
referral of students for psychological counseling services are: (1) Student Assistance Programs, (2) Instructional
Support Teams, and (3) Child Study Teams. Each building has at least one and often two or more of these procedures
in place. All have the advantage of a multidisciplinary team approach which focuses a variety of resources upon the
question of what services and programs may be necessary to meet a student's needs.
These programs should be considered an integral part of the child find process mandated under IDEA. If any
restructuring is necessary, it lies in the conclusion that outside referrals should be the norm when it comes to
psychological counseling services. Particularly in the case of Student Assistance Programs, there was a built in
assumption that school staff, were not prepared to deliver the more in-depth services due to time and personnel
restrictions. Instead mental health or drug and alcohol specialists from community agencies would be utilized. The
findings from the U. S. Department of Education make clear that this is not to be the case and that LEA's must take
more responsibility for delivering such services for students with disabilities in order to deliver a free and appropriate
public education.
Local education agencies may need to broaden the continuum of on site services, which can be offered
before resorting to an outside referral. The use of community mental health and/or drug and alcohol counseling has
been incorporated into the in house services of a number of districts. Full of part-time contracts for such services
supplement those provided by school counselors, social workers and psychologists.
Continuum of Services
My second point concerns the continuum of psychological counseling services that should be available to
students. Just how far reaching an LEA's continuum of services needs to be is open to discussion, but at the least it
needs to include the following:
School Wide Effective Behavior Support (SWEBS), which can include those preventative and
developmental counseling programs generally made available to all students through which they will become adept at
the skills and concepts of appropriate behavior toward peers and adults.
Classroom Behavior Management, which focuses upon ensuring that student behavior within the classroom
setting is not disruptive. Such prosocial skills may be taught individually or in groups up to classroom size.
Individual Behavior Support Plans, which take a more formal, even contractual, approach to establishing
goals and objectives for improved behavior that must include benchmarks and rewards.
Consultation, by which persons trained in psychological counseling provide support to the instructional staff
as to best strategies for dealing with specific behavioral issues in the classroom. Consultation could also include that
offered to parents and significant others in a child's environment.
Group Psychological Counseling Services, in which a small group of students who have been identified as
having similar issues are brought together on a regular basis for counseling that often focuses upon social interaction.
Individual Psychological Counseling Services, whereby a single student can receive more intensive attention
for the resolution of issues and concerns whether academic or personal/social in nature.
The implementation of this continuum of services may reduce the number of students requiring more
intensive services.
The counseling profession has in recent years been placing more emphasis upon a clearly defined scope and
sequence of services which ensures that all students have an equal opportunity to receive the degree of services they
require. The adoption of the American School Counselor Association's National Standards for School Counseling
Programs in 1997 is one example of a framework that is result-based and sequential in the delivery of counseling
services.
Barriers to Service Delivery
Where barriers do exist to the availability of a spectrum of services as described previously, they often are
based upon one of the following:
Lack of sufficient staff - With counselors serving between 500-600 students on the average (figures that are
somewhat smaller at the secondary level and larger at the elementary level), some districts find it difficult to allocate
the time necessary for additional special needs counseling.
Under-utilization of Trained Professionals - Even when the number of staff may be considered sufficient it is
not uncommon to find that their skills are being underutilized. Instead of engaging in activities of a psychological
counseling nature, school counselors, psychologists and social workers are assigned such clerical duties as filing,
typing reports, counting out test materials, etc. Or are used as handy substitutes for absent teachers, lunchroom
monitors, or test proctors. Despite the fact that each of these professions requires training at a graduate level for
certification, it is not uncommon to find a psychological counselor spending less than a fourth of their time in direct
counseling services such as were described previously.
Inadequate Training - Despite the state standards for training counselors, psychologists and social workers to
serve in the schools, there exists considerable variation in the quality of training and particularly when it comes to
addressing the needs of the exceptional child. One cursory survey course may be all that is included out of a 60-credit
program of studies. While one can argue that exceptional children need the same sort of counseling services as their
non-identified peers, it is still essential that a counselor is familiar with the characteristics, behaviors and responses of
the various exceptionalities and how the standard counseling services must be adapted to best address them.
In summary, if LEA's are to take their responsibility for offering adequate psychological counseling services
seriously, they must provide sufficient staff, use them in accordance with their training, and ensure that their skills are
upgraded either pre or post employment.
My final point concerns the responsibility of professional associations such as my own to address the
psychological counseling needs of their clients. In the case of the School Counselors Association, I propose to take
three steps within the next few months. First will be to make a presentation at the annual state conference similar to
what has been presented here today. Second will be to provide this information to the counselors educators from the
26 universities and colleges that train school counselors at a spring workshop I am planning for them at Lehigh
University. Hopefully they will then make some revisions to their curricula to address the issues. Third will be to
develop a position paper for adoption by the organization and to disseminate it widely to the membership.