192 Creating a Binder for the Individual with ASD

Caring for an individual with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can feel overwhelming at times. Keeping track of doctors’ recommendations, therapy goals, school IEPs, and other programming documents can easily become too much to handle. Through each of your appointments and evaluations, you will amass large numbers of forms, evaluations, reports, and other documents related to the individual’s disability. It is easy to lose track of the documents or forget what is discussed in meetings and at appointments. It is important to have a simple, easy to manage system for keeping everything organized and in one place. One useful technique for accomplishing all of these goals is to create a binder. Creating a binder can help you feel organized and enable you to have a clear picture of the whole person. The binder can serve as an important organizational tool to advocate for the individual, communicate the individual’s strengths and needs, and be a more involved and informed team player when working with the individual’s team. An additional advantage of a binder is that it is portable, so you will easily be able to bring the information with you from meeting to meeting. By creating a portable system, you can ensure that all of the professionals involved in the individual’s care are fully aware of what the others are doing.

Helpful Tips

Determine the most effective organization system to fit both your and the indviddual’s needs.

• You may wish to consider broad sections for medical, school, community, resources, and reference or you may find it more helpful to have separate binders for various areas such as a binder specifically for school documents with sections labeled as IEPs, report cards, evaluations, work samples, and home-school communication. Another option could be having sections separated simply between school and non-school documents where both formal and informal documents within these two settings could be chronologically stored.
• Consider creating an explanation or list of the documents that can be found within each section for quick reference after you have determined how you will organize your binder and so you will know how to file documents in the future.

Create a master contact list so you have the names of all individuals or groups that play a role in education and services.

• Your list will be most helpful if you have the name, contact information, role, and any other important information for each of these individuals, groups, and/or organizations.
• Dependent on how you organize your binder, you may find it helpful to put this list at the beginning of each section. For example, if you have separate medical and school sections, you may wish to include a list of physicians, outside/private therapists, nurses, etc., within the medical section while you may have a list including the principal, special education director, special education teacher, general education teacher, speech therapist, etc. within the school section and VR counselor, provider, and state contact for employability services section.

Date documents as they are received and added to your binder:

• When you receive a copy of parent rights at CC meetings or similar for doctor and/or other provider visits, place a date on the copy provided and get rid of older copies. This will assure that you have the most recent version of parent rights at your fingertip.
• Use a pencil to date any other documents provided so that you will be able to erase any notations.
• By dating the documents, you will be able to check for duplicates. If you notice any duplicates within your binder, keep the best copy and remove the additional copy to stay organized.
• Date all documents you place within the binder including reports, requests, work samples, notes, etc.

Maintain documents within your binder to stay organized:

• Hole-punch all documents after they are dated and place them within the appropriate section of your binder.
• Be careful when you are using the hole-punch that you do not punch holes in signatures, dates, or key text.
• File documents in chronological order (i.e., oldest documents at the front of each section and newest documents at the back of each section).
• Consider creating a document list within each section of your binder to help recall what materials can be found within that section. As you add documents to your binder, update this list with the date, contact, type, and any other pertinent information about the added document.

Although there is no simple way to reduce the amount of information you will likely need to keep in regards to the individual’s care, there are easy ways to make it more manageable. Purchasing an inexpensive binder and a package of tab dividers can allow you to quickly and easily set up your binder. In addition, keeping supplies on hand can assure you feel organized.

Helpful supplies

• Tab dividers
• Pens
• Pencils
• Utensil pouch (pencil pocket)
• 3-hole punch or hole puncher
• Post-it pads