Service Delivery Models

As we know, service delivery models do not need to be specified in the IEP according to the federal government. If your state requires it, then you will need to list them. If your state does not require it, then your local LEA or school district may require it and then you would need to list them. If they do not require it, in other words it is not a line item on your IEP, then you do not have to specify service delivery models. You have to specify minutes of intervention that you will provide or hours, depending on how you do it, over an IEP time period so you can utilize all the different kinds of service delivery models that you anticipate needing. It will definitely vary for each IEP format that you might use.

I think one of the opportunities that you have, may be not naming the model because that might not mean anything to anyone in most cases outside of our field, but to be able to talk about the benefits of doing an intensive model and what that will mean in terms of the potential change in the child's acquisition of the target utterance. The guidelines that are provided on some of these models (in this course) give you some language to discuss the types of service you are providing for a child, how many hours you can accomplish if you could see the child everyday versus spreading it out over the year and eventually we could bring people along and have them better understand what we are doing and how we accomplish our job.

Judy Montgomery is Professor, Special Education at Chapman University, Orange, CA. She is Former President of ASHA; Board Recognized Specialist in Child Language; Editor in Chief of Communication Disorders Quarterly. She has 24 years experience in public schools as a Speech Language Pathologist, Principal, and Director of Special Education.