Florida’s Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) program is committed to helping people with disabilities find meaningful careers. VR may assist with training, medical treatment, accommodations, and other services so that a person with a disability may become employed.

How Can VR Help?

VR provides services to eligible individuals with disabilities who have a substantial impediment to employment and need VR services to obtain, maintain, or regain employment.

This checklist may help address your transition needs. This is only a basic guide. The important part is remembering to stay involved in the transition process to ensure that your needs and goals are addressed to prepare for life after high school.

The Special Care Organizational Record for Children With Special Health Care Needs (SCOR) is specifically designed as an organizing tool for parents. It is intended to help track and organize your child’s information to make it easier for someone to care for your child in your absence. 

The SCOR can be used to capture a variety of information, including your child’s birth history, likes and dislikes, medical and educational information, insurance, and step-by-step action plans in case of an emergency. While the SCOR is organized into different sections, you are encouraged to reorganize it to accommodate your needs.

Please note that while the SCOR provides instructions for the care and keeping of your child, it is not legally binding in any way. It also contains private information such as Social Security numbers, medical history/information, and insurance information. To maintain your family’s privacy, keep your SCOR in a safe place.

The SCOR is available in Adobe Acrobat format, allowing you to type information directly into the forms. If you do not have your information readily available, save the SCOR and update it later or print the forms you need and fill them out by hand.

What is the SCOR for Children With Special Health Care Needs?

The SCOR is an organizing tool for families who have children with special health care needs. It is designed to help you keep track of relevant information regarding your child’s health and care in the event that you are unable to provide the care yourself.

How can the SCOR help you?

In the process of caring for your child with special health needs, information and paperwork must be readily accessible. The SCOR will help you organize this information and make it easier for you to quickly find what you need. It will also make it easier for you to share key information with your child’s care providers.

Use the SCOR to:

• Track changes in your child’s medicines or treatments
• List telephone numbers for healthcare providers and community organizations
• Prepare for appointments
• File information about your child’s health history
• Share new information with your child’s primary doctor, public health or school nurse, daycare staff, and others caring for your child

Some helpful hints for using your child’s SCOR:

• Keep the SCOR where it is easy to find so it will always be on hand when you need it.
• Be mindful that the SCOR contains private information and should be kept in a safe place.
• Keep the SCOR as up-to-date as possible. Add new information to the SCOR whenever there is a change in your child’s treatment.
• Bring the SCOR with you to appointments and hospital visits so that the information you need will be close at hand.

Click below to download and start using the SCOR for your child.

The purpose of this downloadable PDF is to help parents and families increase their understanding of the IPE process for individuals with disabilities and their families.

In this download, we will cover:

• What is an IPE
• What are VR services
• Eligibility for VR services
• VR assessment
• And more

Click below to download the PDF and gain insight into IPE.

The evaluation is the cornerstone or foundation of the IEP process. The results of the evaluation will drive future decisions. FND believes that the more parents know about how the special education system works, the more successful we are in helping to provide the best educational opportunities for our children.

In this downloadable PDF, you will find everything you need to know about the evaluation process in special education. From the process itself to areas that will be evaluated, download the PDF to learn more.

Click below to download Understanding the Evaluation Process in Special Education and get the help you’re looking for.

Before beginning the special education process, it may be useful to review the skills that can help you build a collaborative relationship with your school so that you and the school staff can develop an effective special education team. When a student is determined to have learning deficits or a disability, parents often find themselves thrust into a new role as a special education advocate.

In addition to learning about their child’s specific deficits or area of disability, they also need to learn the skills necessary to communicate effectively with school staff members and to become a member of their child’s education team. It is important that you develop a relationship of mutual respect and trust. Parents and staff members need to express thoughts in direct, honest, and appropriate ways while retaining and displaying respect for the rights and opinions of others.

In this downloadable PDF, you will find hints and tips will be useful when you prepare to attend a meeting about your child, whether it is an eligibility or IEP meeting or an informal meeting to discuss your child’s progress and/or your concerns. They will help you become a more effective member of your child’s education team and help you develop a positive, collaborative relationship with your child’s teachers.

Click below to download The Importance of Good Communication Skills.

This brochure by the Florida Department of Education identifies accommodations and modifications that may be needed by students with disabilities in mainstream and specialized secondary and postsecondary career education and adult general education programs. Federal and state legislation requires the provision of accommodations and modifications for students with disabilities.

These accommodations and modifications are identified on transition individual educational plans (IEPs) or 504 Plans (for secondary students) or other plans that may be used for individual students with disabilities at the postsecondary/adult level.

Click below to download the brochure.

Stress is a state of bodily and mental tension that affects performance. Stress has become part of our hectic everyday lives and is, indeed, a fact of life. It can be an obstacle that makes quality of life difficult to achieve for families affected by disability. However, there is some good news about stress:

• Mild to moderate stress helps motivate people to achieve.
• Each person and family can choose their attitude about stress: to be a survivor or a victim.
• Each person and family can also choose to cope by understanding themselves and by using a variety of ways to cope.

This pamphlet educational pamphlet has been written for parents of persons with disabilities, individuals with disabilities, friends and professionals by the Florida Developmental Disabilities Council. The three goals of the pamphlet are to:

• Increase understanding of signs and sources of stress
• Provide tips for preventing and coping with stress
• Suggest support resources to help people cope with stress

Click the button below to download the pamphlet on Disability Related Stress.

The completion of high school is the beginning of adult life. Entitlement in public education ends, and young people and their families are faced with many options and decisions about the future.

The most common choices for the future are pursuing vocational training or further academic education, getting a job, and living independently. For students with disabilities, these choices may be more complex and may require a great deal of planning. Planning the transition from school to adult life begins, at the latest, during high school. In fact, transition planning is required, by law, to start once a student reaches 14 years of age, or younger, if appropriate. This transition planning becomes formalized as part of the student’s Individualized Education Program (IEP).

Transition services are intended to prepare students to make the transition from the world of school to the world of adulthood. In planning what type of transition services a student needs to prepare for adulthood, the IEP Team considers areas such as postsecondary education or vocational training, employment, independent living, and community participation. The transition services themselves are a coordinated set of activities that are based on the student’s needs and that take into account his or her preferences and interests. Transition services can include instruction, community experiences, the development of employment and other post-school adult living objectives, and (if appropriate) the acquisition of daily living skills and functional vocational assessment.

This Transition Summary provides ideas and information on how students, families, school personnel, service providers, and others can work together to help students make a smooth transition. In particular, this document focuses on creative transition planning and services that use all the resources that exist in communities, not just the agencies that have traditionally been involved.

This publication also provides:

• Definitions of some terms used in transition planning
• Lists of individuals and agencies that can help the IEP Team create a successful transition plan
• Guides to finding the groups and agencies that provide transition services
• Examples of creative transition plans
• Ways to improve the transition system by working at the community level

Download the full publication to learn more about transition planning.