Can I decline some IEP services if my child is receiving private services?

If your child is receiving services from both school therapy providers and outside or private providers, you might wonder if you should decline some of the IEP services. This might especially be a concern if your child is reluctant to participate in therapies, so you want to focus their efforts on certain ones, or if you're worried their services are pulling them from class too often.

Your first step should be to call an IEP meeting with all the providers present, which will likely take 30 days. The school will usually invite any current providers, but the only person they have to invite is your child's teacher, so make sure to request that all current school providers attend. You can also invite previous providers who know your child.

In the meantime, meet 1:1 with the providers to discuss concerns. Before cutting any services, talk to the providers about what they're working on with your child; they might be working on entirely different things at school and in private therapy. A good idea is to allow providers to speak to each other if the private providers are able to attend the IEP meeting.

If your child is older, note that tweens and teens often don’t think they need the extra support, but they do, and going without can spiral into other issues. As a parent, it's important assess whether your child needs the service, not whether they want it.

You can decide to pause a service without canceling it completely in order to see how it affects your child's progress. The amount of time to pause the service would depend on your child and their specific situation.

If you do decide to drop one or more IEP services, your case manager can do an addendum to the IEP over the phone.