ABSTRACT
Providing a quality educational program for students with profound multiple disabilities that is functional, integrated, and outcome oriented can be extremely difficult and complicated for educators and related services personnel. This chapter describes a process for customizing instruction for students with profound multiple disabilities that has been used to design instructional programs and maximizes the attainment of functional outcomes for students. The process focuses on collaborative teamwork and problem solving to design and implement instructional programs by ensuring that the 5 components of the process are included. Team members determine prepositioning handling procedures; overall body positioning for instruction; hand, arm, and head positioning; instructional adaptations and materials; and handling procedures to combine with systematic instructional strategies. After team members have addressed the previous components for customizing instruction, an individualized instructional program is developed for each student that includes the student's individual setup, instructional strategy, and data collection procedures.
