Do you have to wait for the next MET when you receive a new diagnosis?

[Brenda Walsh]

I know a family who recently received an autism diagnosis for their son. The son already has an IEP under OHI. The mother wants autism put on the IEP, which I know schools don’t want to do. The school told the mother that she had to wait until the next MET to add the diagnosis. Is that true? I didn’t think it was since they only have to do a MET once every three years. What do we ask for to get it added?

[JSD24]

A MET is a multidisciplinary evaluation team.  So you question is:  does this team need to meet if a child now has an ASD diagnosis.  My answer is no.  The parent could write a parent letter of concern saying that they feel that when X does A, B and C at school, it is due to them having a medical autism diagnosis.  They can end things there or they can add that they would like for the school to evaluate for educational autism.  Requesting an ASD eval would trigger the MET team to meet since they are the ones who should be deciding if this eval is needed.  Also, evals can be done more often than triennially.

Depending on what the report looks like from the medical person who diagnosed ASD, this could be shared with the school at this point.  It could help the MET team decide about what to do.  (My school does not do a MET meeting annually and parents are not a required member of this team.  I am under the impression they only meet when a parent or teacher request an eval.)

The parent letter of concern should be copied into the IEP which definitely gets the diagnosis added to the IEP.  If something different is needed in the IEP given this diagnosis - that's up to the IEP team to decide.  I don't see a school unchecking OHI & checking the ASD box on the IEP when a parent makes this sort of request.  It becomes an admission that the school did not assess all areas of suspected disability which is what they needed to do with the last eval they did plus medical & educational autism are different.  If the person who did the eval has school credentials, my answer would be different because this should be looked at as an educational eval.