Parents are part of the IEP team, but they are not always the easiest to get in touch with. Different schedules, language barriers, and other obstacles can make it difficult for school staff to communicate with families about upcoming IEP meetings and changes to an IEP.
There’s a lot to do before you hold an IEP meeting, and thankfully, there are a few different ways to get in touch with parents about IEP meetings that may help ensure that everyone is present for the meeting and on the same page.
In an ideal world, parents would respond to notes home, emails, and phone calls promptly. However, as all special educators know, that is definitely not always the case.
When you are planning for the IEP meeting, make sure to allow for additional time that it might take to reach the student’s family. Not only will this take some of the stress of the meeting off of you, but it will ensure that parents have adequate time to respond.
Use our free IEP Writing Timeline to map out your due dates.
Three attempts to contact the family before holding the IEP meeting is key. This can be one contact attempt per week over the course of three weeks or three contact attempts within a 10 day time period. Your district will typically have guidelines to help you with the timing, but three attempts are typically key.
Make sure you are documenting each attempt at contacting the family.
While keeping it low-key and low-pressure, you may want to consider giving the student an incentive for returning the paperwork in a timely fashion. The parameters of that can be set by what you need and when, but students typically remember to hand off paperwork and return it if they have a reward for bringing it back in. There should be no pressure or consequence for not returning it, but a positive reinforcement might just do the trick.
Soliciting help from the school counselor or social work to contact the parents about the IEP meeting is also an option.
Some districts have social workers make home visits to families to hand deliver the paperwork. If your district is not one of those districts, perhaps the school counselor can make a phone call home instead.
If your student’s family is not responding to notes sent home with the student, try switching up the contact method. Emails, text messages, phone calls, and even Facebook Messenger or home visits may all be options for making sure that the parents are informed about the upcoming meeting. Sometimes emailing a simple Google Form that families can fill out with their availability and preferences can make a big difference.
Switching up when you reach out to them might also help. If you are consistently texting or emailing while they are at work, they might not be able to respond and may forget about it when they get home.
Make sure that you are documenting every attempted contact in your notes. Whether you make contact with the family or not, it will be important to have documentation that attempts were made, how many, and when. Those notes might also help the teacher next year who needs to get in contact with the family for the next IEP meeting!
It’s not always easy getting in touch with families about IEP meetings, but persistence often pays off. Follow your district’s guidelines for the number of times contact attempts are needed (3 is the minimum per IDEA), try different methods of contacting them, and document everything.
You can learn more about what needs done before, during, and after an IEP meeting here.
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