The Neuroaffirming IEP: Building Better Goals and Advocating for Them at the Table

In this session, Dr. Destiny Huff joins host Greg Santucci to talk about the IEP table: how it works, who belongs at it, and how parents and professionals can advocate for genuinely neuroaffirming special education services. Dr. Huff is a mental health therapist, certified trauma therapist, and non-attorney special education advocate who is late-diagnosed autistic and ADHD, and a parent of two neurodivergent kids on IEPs.

She walks through how families can prepare before a meeting ever starts, what to know before signing, and why the learner belongs in the conversation about their own program. Together they dig into accommodations that reflect the actual human instead of the standard checklist, what makes a goal neuroaffirming rather than compliance-driven, how to use a functional behavior assessment as a window into how a team sees a child, and when a one-to-one is the right support. Dr. Huff is candid about the ableism she encounters in nearly every meeting and how she names it without burning bridges.

Educators, therapists, and parents will walk away with concrete strategies for preparing, documenting, and following up, language for asking better questions when a behavior is misread, and a clear framework for treating the school team and the home team as one IEP team. It is a practical, hopeful look at how to build a plan that actually fits the child it was written for.