"Other Health Impairment" classification??

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A teacher who works periodically with our son (AS and ADHD) wants us to have him classified as "Other Health Impaired" (OHI) in order to qualify to get him a personal aide to help him when he gets frustrated or has trouble with classwork.

A friend said this:

Does anyone have any information or experiences to share about this? We think it's a good idea that he has an aide, but we're just not sure if the OHI designation is the best way to go about it.

We meet with the school district's autism team next week to discuss their findings and recommendations, and I've already been told they will likely recommend our son have an aide to help with SOCIAL issues, but not ACADEMIC. This teacher is saying he needs the OHI classification to get an aide to help with his academic problems.

Does he need TWO aides, one for social and one for academic? I am confused.

Surely he could have one aide to do both jobs?

You would think, wouldn't you? I was confused, because this teacher called today and seemed to want an answer on the spot. I said "But aren't we all meeting with the autism team next week? Shouldn't we wait and see what they have to say?" She said she couldn't discuss all their findings with me over the phone, but she did say that she expected the autism team to recommend an aide for social situations. So yeah, I don't understand why we'd need the OHI designation if he's already getting an aide...unless the autism team says he needs the aide ONLY for social situations, and not academic. Hm.

I told her I'd prefer to wait and bring all of this to the table when we meet with the autism team next week.

OHI is supposed to refer to other disability not covered by a standard diagnosis. for instance, a student with really poor vision but not poor enough to get services for the blind could perhaps receive services if they were classified OHI..........I'm curious to know how the teacher thinks she'll be able to get an OHI classification for your son?

Unfortunately every state and every district has different rules and guidelines for these things. So what I have to say may or may not apply. Something to consider, however, is how effective an aid for acedemics might be. Generally these aids are not trained teachers, so their ability to provide creative guidance in the classroom is limited. My son has never had an aide, although he has been in a class where one was present for another student (the aid sometimes assisted my son as well), and it seems to me that in practice the aids work mostly as a social and sensory buffer. Moving the child to a more comfortable location when overstimulated, taking dictation when writing is an issue for the child, etc. The real question to me is what will the difference be, on a practical level, between having a social aid and having an acedemic one? Can the teacher describe this for you so that you can understand why she is making the recommendation she is?

Otherwise, I agree with you that pragmatic speech is an important service and I would not be willing to accept a classification that no longer qualified your child for it. That is something you will need to find out as well.

Our son has ASD as his first classification but has OHI in the second classification due to his gastro-intestinal problems, food allergies, and mitochondrial disease. Just a point of clarification, does your child have ASD on his IEP already?

He doesn't have an IEP yet; we're in the process of that right now. He has a 504. We're hoping to construct the IEP after meeting with the autism evaluation team this coming week.