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What is IEP Facilitation?

A facilitated IEP meeting is an option for early conflict prevention available to parents of children with disabilities and to school districts. The district and parents can request a trained, impartial professional facilitator to attend the IEP meeting to help keep members of the IEP team focused while addressing conflicts and disagreements that may arise during the meeting.

The facilitator also helps the IEP team to keep the meeting focused on the student, ensures everyone at the table has a voice, encourages active listening by all the participants, and keeps the group from getting stuck on just one goal (or one part) of the IEP.

The process may be used for any IEP team meeting including: initial, annual, reevaluation, review/revision.

IEP facilitation is free to all participants. WSEMS will pay the facilitator with grant funds from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. The facilitators have a maximum of three hours to spend with the parties, which includes any time spent before and after the IEP meeting.