What’s an Individual Family Service Plan?

You’ve starting the Early Intervention process and maybe even have an evaluation planned. But now what? If your child qualifies for services, the therapists and you will sit down and write an Individual Family Service plan for your child. The IFSP – Individual Family Service Plan – is the special document that outlines what services your child qualifies for as well as what the service providers will work on with your child. This Early Intervention document is legally binding and often includes much more than information that you need. Of course, anything legal includes way more than you truly need.

What Goes into the IFSP

An IFSP has many different components. Some of these are necessary for state law and the legal side of Early Intervention. However, so many of the sections are very beneficial for families when working with your little one. This one document gives you so much information about your child and exactly what she is working on. In addition, it lays out exactly which services your child will receive and when.

Early Intervention Team Information

Within the IFSP, your service coordinator will include today’s date. They will also include a list of all members present for the writing of the individual family service plan. They usually will put the parent or guardians first. Then add in all the evaluators present, including the service coordinator as well. They will need your signature to show that you were present for the meeting. Some service providers like to have everyone sign in the beginning, others wait until the end to get all the necessary signatures.

Background Information

Your coordinator should input all the background information about your child into the plan. This was information that you shared during your interview and follow up conversations with your coordinator. Even though you provided this information, your coordinator will mostly want to read it aloud during the meeting. So listen, update or modify anything, but really it’s just a reporting of what you shared.

It may include information from other professionals if your coordinator received permission to speak to them. Don’t worry, the child’s legal guardian gives this permission, which is usually the parent. The Early Intervention coordinator only speaks with the professionals with whom they have permission from the family to speak.

Your child stars here! Make them the most important person of this meeting. Share what you child can do, their strengths, and what they enjoy. Every decision should be based on your child and their needs.

Current Levels

Next, The IFSP includes a section on your child’s current levels. This is based on the play based evaluation that just wrapped up. The current levels come from both the therapists’ interactions with your child and the questions you answered. This will mostly focus on what your child is able to do right now.

The providers may or may not share this information again since they just shared it to determine eligibility. As the evaluators shared their reports to determine if your child qualifies for Early Intervention, they shared the current levels of performance based on their assessment tools. However, some coordinators need to follow every box, while others have a more shorthand method. Either way, this is usually a retelling of what they just told you.

If your service coordinator chooses to skip the repeat, but you really want to hear it. That’s okay, just ask. They will read it to you or have the evaluators share the information. And remember, you will get a copy of the IFSP too.

Early Intervention Goals

Now comes the fun part! You get to discuss what your child should work on to help them to grow. These are your child’s goals or what the therapists and your family will work on with your little one. Most of the time, these goals focus on the areas identified as areas for more growth during the play based evaluation. However, it’s good to note that in some states, we can write goals for any area that your child might need more support, not just in the area that your little one qualified. Read more about your state services for Early Intervention on the state contact page. And, if you are unsure, just ask.

If your child qualifies for a services, that’s great! This means your child will definitely have goals in that area. However, you might be concerned with other areas of development, or even need support with something else. That’s okay, just ask. It’s always better to share your concerns. Sometimes, these will be added to your child’s IFSP. Other times, the service coordinator will provide you resources. But you definitely won’t get any help if you don’t ask.

Our younger son qualified for OT services based on testing, but we felt his speech also needed support. He was able to also receive speech based services because we wrote speech based goals. Generally these goals are areas where the play based evaluation showed your child working below the age expectations. But don’t be shy here! Be sure to speak up for what you want your child to work on. If you stay quiet, no one else will speak up for your child.

Progress Updates

Within the goal section, your coordinator will add information about reporting progress. This is how often the therapists will share your child’s progress with you. At a minimum, this will be shared every 6-months. However, we have found that most therapists will update your child’s progress with each meeting or every other meeting. These usually come in the form of notes sent directly to the parent.

These notes are also attached to your child’s IFSP. They become part of your child’s record and you can ask for a copy at any time. Be sure to ask for a paper copy if that’s what you would like to receive. More often than not, these are sent digitally to families.

Early Intervention Services

After writing the goals, you discuss which services your child will need. This is where the team (including you) decides which services providers will work with your child (a speech pathologist, occupational therapist, behavioral therapist, physical therapist, child psychologist, developmental therapist, etc). The specific therapists needed depends on the goals written for your child. For example, if the team writes speech goals, they will want to pair you with a speech and language therapist.

Some states have multiple therapists work with your family, while other states might pair you with just one therapist. If your child has goals in multiple areas, you may find that you will need to schedule two or more therapists to work on your child’s goals. Other times, your state will partner you with one therapist who will help your child work on all their goals. This therapist will network and collaborate with other therapists when necessary to meet your child’s needs.

Frequency of Services

You will also decide how much support, where the support will take place, and the frequency of the support. This means that the team (including you) will discuss how often your child will need to receive services to help them to meet their goals. Most of the time, therapies are scheduled as minutes per week or minutes per month. For Early Intervention it is quite common for the therapist to come to your house. However, if you prefer, the therapist can meet your child at day care, your office, or you can even bring your child to the therapist’s office.

For our family, this has typically been 1 hour a week per therapy that our child needed. So our son received 1 hour of speech services and 1 hour of occupational therapy while our daughter received only 1 hour of speech per week. The therapists delivered all services in our home. But your child may qualify for more services or less services based on their goals.

Impact

Finally, the coordinator will ask a series of questions to determine how the delay impacts your little one in life. You may find that these are very limited or not limited at all. They do not disqualify your child from services, but there should be some delay that impacts the daily life if receiving services. So do not fret if some members of the team state that your child struggles more than you believe they do. This is all for the paperwork and doesn’t actually change who your child is or how they are growing.

Parent Consent for Early Intervention

Now that the plan is written, your service provider will need your consent to put the plan into action. You will most likely need to sign quite a bit of documents so that services can begin. We needed to sign to show we were present at the meeting. Then we signed to show we consented with the Individual Family Service Plan and wanted our child to receive services. Finally, we needed to sign payment and insurance information. I have heard that some coordinators have you sign cancellation forms too, so that you understand your family may be billed if you do not follow the correct cancellation procedures.

Just so you know, you do not have to sign all the paperwork right now. The sooner you provide consent, the quicker your service provider can set up the individual therapies for your child. However, if you want to review the paperwork with your partner, family, or friends, that’s okay too. If you want to sit down with a child advocate, you can do that too! Ask for a few days to review the paperwork and sign when you are comfortable.

Fees for Early Intervention

Early Intervention in most states is provided on a sliding fee scale. This means that each family pays a different amount based on their income. Some families will pay nothing at all and all services are free. Some families may pay their insurance deductible and all other costs are covered by insurance. Other families may pay for services out of pocket while some families will not see any bill because insurance covers the entire cost. Each state and insurance plan is different.

For this reason, we suggest placing a call to your child’s medical insurance company. Ask your insurance which Early Intervention therapies are provided, the frequency they cover, and the length of meetings. It’s always good to go into the meetings with this information. Many times your Early Intervention Service Coordinator will also speak with your insurance and inform you of this information.

Once the paperwork is completed, the fun begins! This is when your child gets to begin services and you get to meet the people who will be playing with your child and offering you support during these early years. This can take a few weeks to months to find coordinators, set up the times that work for you and them, as well as begin therapy. That’s why it is so important to get your signed consent and insurance paperwork over to your coordinator as soon as your are comfortable. If you aren’t hearing anything, just be patient and keeping asking for updates from your Early Intervention Service Coordinator.

Connect with Us for More Tips for Navigating Parenting

Already have the IFSP written and wondering about the next steps? Read about the next big meeting in Early Intervention to schedule: the 6 Month Review. This might sound overwhelming, but it’s really a time to celebrate your child’s growth and progress. We’d love to connect with you. Drop us a comment below to let us know what you thought of this guide to writing an Individual Family Service Plan. If you have any questions, please let us know. Happy to help parents feel confident going into these meetings.

Looking for more great tips? We’d love it if you’d subscribe to our newsletter. Our newsletters comes with great tips for parents and freebies to help families with practical solutions for real life problems. Don’t miss out on receiving yours soon.

Hi, I’m Nicole.

Here at Creatingbutterflies we provide families with practical solutions to real life problems for everything parenting, scouting, dual language, and enjoying time outdoors. We are a family of 6 with 4 wonderful becoming bilingual children who loves scouting, camping, and hiking with their family. Mom is an educator and dad is a firefighter/paramedic.