Welcome to Creating and Sustaining Peer Networks. This training was developed by Texas SPED Support in collaboration with the Texas Education Agency. 

This is the seventh in our Inclusion Series. This course is focused on facilitating authentic friendships for students with significant cognitive disabilities and complex access needs. The content in this training aligns with the information in Chapter 8 of the Cheryl M. Jorgensen book (2018), It’s More Than “Just Being In:” Creating Authentic Inclusion for Students with Complex Support Needs.

The learning objectives for this training are:

• To compare and contrast a traditional versus a new view of social relationships for students with complex access needs.
• To show the interrelationships among several core elements of inclusive education and students’ social relationships.
• To examine the barriers to social relationships that must be removed before friendships are possible.
• To learn strategies for facilitating social relationships once barriers are removed.