Home hospital instruction is not meant to replace the rights of special education students to receive an appropriate offer of placement and services. It should never be raised as an option if the placement is based on the child’s category of disability. Your child is entitled to the full panopoly of services and placement.
What is home hospital? The Home and Hospital Instruction Program (California Education Code Section 48206.3) serves students who incur a temporary disability, which makes attendance in the regular day classes or alternative education program impossible or inadvisable.
The purpose of home and hospital instruction is to provide instruction to a student with a temporary disability in the student’s home or in a hospital or other residential health facility, excluding state hospitals.
“Temporary disability” means a physical, mental, or emotional disability incurred while a student is enrolled in regular day classes or an alternative education program and after which a student can reasonably be expected to return to regular day classes or an alternative educational program without special interventions.
Notice the word “temporary”. Children who are determined to be eligible for special education services based on any one of the 13 categories of eligiblity should not count their special area of need such as autism, other health impairment etc. as “temporary”.
However, there are circumstances when the IEP team jointly believes that a child will be most appropriately served in the home setting. That is different than home hospital instruction because there it is determined that the child’s needs can appropriately be served in a home setting and that home setting is not meant to be a temporary placement. However, that is not to say that if the child makes progress that moving the child to a less restrictive setting such as at a non public school or public school setting.
Assuming your child is IEP eligible and has still incurred a temorary disability, when making a decision about placing a child in the home setting through an IEP the following questions should be raised by the parents or the IEP team:
1. How long will the home placement last? (note this may depend on your doctor’s own report about when your child is ready to return to the classroom).
3. What are the number of hours of instruction and is that enough to avoid regression?
4. Will the instruction include supports and services such as an aide?
5. How will the delivery of speech and other related services be provided?
6. What is the requirement that an adult be present other than the teacher?
7. How will the management and coordination of classroom work be exchanged between the classroom teacher and the home instructional teacher?
The above are just a few examples of questions to have answered.