"Other Health Impaired"

: Has anyone’s ADHD child been classified as “Other Health
: Impaired”? What did it take to get this classification? Was
: your child failing badly because of his/her ADHD or just
: struggling as my son does.My 6th grader is qualified under OHI. My husband and I had to insist on this at the meeting we had in my sons 4th grade eval. our main concern being that as a military family we wanted something(an iep) that would travel with us and be respected by the incoming schools.My son was evaluated in the 1st grade and dx ADHD/inattentive and CAPD but through the hospital. In 2nd he was evaled by school who called hime a late bloomer. In 4th grade he was failing everything and was evaled again. My ammunition was the fact that all of his teachers to this point made comments on how hard he worked, how much effort he gave in class and still he was not successfull. His standardized test scores were in the single digits consistently since 1st grade through the stanford 9 in 4th. He required a lot of effort from his teachers to be successfull. He was in a pullout resource room for 5th and is now in reg. classes with support (we are trying this out, we will see how his grades are in a couple of weeks). Anyway it can be done, just have all your ammo lined up(schoolwork examples, progress reports from teachers, test score, etc.) and best of luck. Also, their tests didn’t see a lot of significance from the capd, so the finding of ohi was based primarily on the effects of his add on his schoolwork.: Our child study team did a full evaluation on my 9 year old son who: was diagnosed with ADHD-Inattentive in September. THey evaluated
: him for learning disabilities and came up with nothing. So they
: said he wasn’t eligible for special ed and that all other
: categories do not apply.: I was reading about Other Health Impaired and it does cover ADHD. My
: son is struggling, he’s frustrated, and he does bad on many tests.
: However, the teacher always allows him to take it over in which he
: usually then passes. So no impact is shown on his report cards.: Before I approach the CST I wanted to get some background info. They
: make me feel so dumb sometimes!: Cindy

My daughter is also labeled OHI due to ADHD. The school says she doesn’t have any LDs although every other outside place I’ve had her tested says she does. I think they labeled her OHI because too many kids had already been labeled ADHD and I heard from someone that if there are too many labeled ADHD the districts have to start answering to someone and they don’t want to do that. She does get special services and always has. Now she goes to a “state” school for LD/ADHD kids.

I am in the very same boat as you! My son was diagnosed a year ago December and has been on medication ever since, which have helped dramatically. He is an A/B student, but struggels with writing, which is typically with ADHD kids. After his eval, they found him to be very average intellectually, but no learning disabilities whatsoever. He was so smart (he probably reads at a 7th grade level) and so capable, they didn’t want to even give him the OHI label, which would have qualified him for Occupational Theraphy under the Special Ed department. Makes me really mad, because that’s the only thing he struggles with right now. He’s got a temporary teacher right now filling a maternity leave, and she was sending all these notes home telling him his work was really messy and I got all over her. If the district isn’t going to support him where it’s obvious he needs help, then I don’t feel they have a right to “judge” his handwriting. Don’t know what I’m gonna do. Hang in there and keep fighting the system if your child really needs the help.: Has anyone’s ADHD child been classified as “Other Health
: Impaired”? What did it take to get this classification? Was
: your child failing badly because of his/her ADHD or just
: struggling as my son does.: Our child study team did a full evaluation on my 9 year old son who
: was diagnosed with ADHD-Inattentive in September. THey evaluated
: him for learning disabilities and came up with nothing. So they
: said he wasn’t eligible for special ed and that all other
: categories do not apply.: I was reading about Other Health Impaired and it does cover ADHD. My
: son is struggling, he’s frustrated, and he does bad on many tests.
: However, the teacher always allows him to take it over in which he
: usually then passes. So no impact is shown on his report cards.: Before I approach the CST I wanted to get some background info. They
: make me feel so dumb sometimes!: Cindy

What you can usually get fairly easily from the CST is a 504 Modification plan. ndid great with this, due in part to the fact that he ended up in a mixed ed class (due to the inclusion of the Classified child, the teacher ends up giving more detailed explanations always). Another great thing was, he has terrible handwriting (and was refused OT!!!!) but due to the 504, he can do any (and all) work on the computer which makes things readable.Just having the 504 in place helps teachers to understand that they may have to deal with things differently sometimes. Good Luck.

PASSWORD>aa0.8zBhqB2BkMy 7 yr old daughter is classsified OHI because of the ADHD Inattentive. I am not a lawyer (just a parent obsessed about my daughter’s education) but I believe that OHI means that the ADHD has to “significantly” affect her performance versus LD where the child has to fail by a specific gap. I don’t think the schools are supposed to be using the LD gap for OHI (otherwise why wouldn’t they just classify all OHI by the LD standard?), though many try to. The law doesn’t specify the definition of “significantly affects” for OHI which is probably the murky water or grey area you are in right now.In a nutshell, my daughter is in top 5% for intelligence and was scoring in the 35-60% range for standardized grade level achievement. The school looked at this and said she was OK - didn’t qualify at first - which made me angry because I think that’s a gap. Her self esteem was plummeting and schoolwork was such a struggle for her (it took 2 hours a night to finish 1st grade homework, reading was/is a major issue). In class, however, she was performing somewhere in the bottom 20% and her teacher when she wrote on her report card “she needs additional support to master the basics.”After embarrassing myself several times at the committe meetings (angry, crying, etc.), I finally got her classified as OHI with the sp ed director admitting “we don’t do enough for these borderline kids in this district.”My husband and I have “pulled out all the stops with her.” She’s now on meds. We had her privately tutored with Orton G for reading. She gets help learning how to write in resource room as well as pull-outs for reading and math at school. Spelling and writing remain a big problem for her and the math isn’t great either, but she’s having a wonderful year this year. Her teacher is great, she knows she has made a lot of progress and her confidence and self esteem are good again.Good luck. Don’t let them intimidate you. Don’t make my mistake with the emotion. Know your facts and keep right at them by firing back simply stated questions that need to be answered to your satisfaction. In the future, you will come across “gems” like fabulous, knowledable teachers, some of who contribute on this board to others who won’t admit there’s a problem because either they don’t understand it or they might have to address it. However, bear in mind that you have to be the “keeper” and advocate for your son’s education.Sorry to get preachy, but this topic just sets me off!!!

PASSWORD>aaphVdPk791FwCindy,My 11 year old daughter was just classified ADHD - Inattentive last fall. I had her tested by the school in the 5th grade because she was struggling so hard to keep up. Her grades were okay mainly A’s and B’s with C in math, but homework took hours,she would forget material overnight, she tested badly, she retained nothing from class and it was affecting her self esteem. She had started calling herself dumb or stupid and giving up on things that were hard. The school testing resulted in NOTHING! They did find that she showed deficiencies in auditory memory and written expression. Basically they said she couldn’t remember what she heard and couldn’t write well enough to write down what she heard. But “she was fine.” Because it took the whole school year to get the testing done, I enrolled her in Sylvan. they found major gaps in her academic knowledge all the way back through elementary school. 4 hours a week at Sylvan for the school year was very expensive, but worth it. She regained her confidence and and improved enough to get her first B in math. Meanwhile, I had her tested independently. The speech pathologist (who is also an advocate for children) noted that because they used her average scores across the board, that she didn’t “qualify” for assistance. Had they used her individual scores and applied the standard deviation, she would qualify on her written expression score alone. By the end of the summer, I also had the ADHD - inattentive diagonsis. So I went into the middle school with the speech pathologist and requested a reevaluation of her results from the previous year and submitted the new test results as well. The end result is that by the end of sept we had her designated as both LD (written expression) and OHI (ADHD). She has both a 504 (accomodations) and an IEP (written expression goals). The school was VERY supportive! The reason for both designations was that she may be able to improve enough to test out of the LD designation, but ADHD will always be with her and she will get the needed accomodations for as long as she needs them. The medication helps her tremendously and she has been very successful this year (straight A’s - I can’t believe it.) She was placed in an assisted Language Arts class (a regular teacher and a sped teacher) so she gets extra assistance as needed. She is writing much better now, spelling is still a problem, but she is much more organized. I don’t know if she will ever write in cursive, but she is learning to type. That really helps. In summary, take a look at the individual scores on your childs tests. There are two areas to focus on. Look at the grade equivalent for each subtest. If one shows that your child is 2 or more grades behind, then look at the SS (standard score). The Standard Score has a plus or minus score along with it. This indicates was range of scores your child should acheive on any given day. Compare this to the range your child would be expected to score in (based on IQ score). In my daughters case, this was 100-105 (average IQ). Her overall Written expression score was 92 and it needed to be 77-82 to qualify for services. But her score on Dictation was 87 with a range of 82-92 on any given day. Therefore, on a bad day, she would qualify. You can use this to argue for LD service for written expression! It depends on your school. Our approach was that although her grades were average, there was a lot of very hard work to keep her head above water and it was affecting her self esteem. Once we had the ADHD diagnosis, we knew she qualifed for 504 OHI, but the Written Expression scores gave us an IEP as well. Our speech pathologist was very surprised because she had never seen a dual designation granted before! But it is worth a try. The advantage with OHI, is that it never goes away. Your child is eligible for accomodations for the rest of their academic career. (I don’t know if it is applicable, but we also had her tested by a developmental optomotrist who found a visual disability. She has been going to vision training once a week for 8 months. The diagnosis was she was not using both eyes together. This made it hard for her to read and retain the info. REally tough to do book reports. We have been using books on tape which has really helped!) Sorry this is so long, hope some of it helps. On the surface, it looks like our kids have similar experiences. If you need more info, let me know. sharon: Has anyone’s ADHD child been classified as “Other Health
: Impaired”? What did it take to get this classification? Was
: your child failing badly because of his/her ADHD or just
: struggling as my son does.: Our child study team did a full evaluation on my 9 year old son who
: was diagnosed with ADHD-Inattentive in September. THey evaluated
: him for learning disabilities and came up with nothing. So they
: said he wasn’t eligible for special ed and that all other
: categories do not apply.: I was reading about Other Health Impaired and it does cover ADHD. My
: son is struggling, he’s frustrated, and he does bad on many tests.
: However, the teacher always allows him to take it over in which he
: usually then passes. So no impact is shown on his report cards.: Before I approach the CST I wanted to get some background info. They
: make me feel so dumb sometimes!: Cindy