Appeals Process

Early Start Due Process
California law and regulation provide parents with a right to disagree with actions taken by a regional center or local education agency (LEA) related to the provision of early intervention services for children ages 0-36 months The procedures for accessing due process, either mediation or hearing, are established in regulation.

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Early Start Mediation and Conference and Due Process Hearing Requests
The purpose of this due process is to resolve disagreements between families and a regional center and/or local education agency (LEA) related to a proposal or refusal for identification, evaluation, assessment, placement, or services.

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Lanterman Act Due Process
The Lanterman Developmental Disabilities Services Act provides applicants and recipients of regional center services the right to dispute those regional center decisions and actions with which one disagrees through the fair hearing process.

The fair hearing process, as established in California law, provides two alternative resolution processes prior to the fair hearing.

The first is an informal meeting with the regional center executive director or his designee and the second is mediation. Both of these alternative resolution processes are voluntary for the applicant or consumer.

In the event that neither an informal meeting nor a mediation resolves the issue, the applicant or consumer has the right to proceed to a fair hearing.

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Fiscal Audit Appeal Process
Regional Centers have a statutory obligation to monitor vendors, including parent vendors, to ensure accountability for the funding expended toward the purchase of services for individuals with developmental disabilities.

One method of monitoring used by regional centers is random audits. Audits may be conducted to verify the units of service delivered to a consumer or group of consumers, to verify wages paid by the vendor to their workers, to verify vendor staffing ratios, to verify vendor cost statement financial information, and to verify consumer Personal & Incidental (P&I) funds maintained by residential facilities. In the event that a regional center vendor disagrees with the findings in the final audit report, the vendor has the right to appeal the findings.

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