Wow, You are in for a real challenge, I wish you all best of luck.
Tomorrow, I am being paired up with child therefore I am doing everything for that child, IEP, reporting to OT, PT, SLT, etc and making sure he/she are fully intergrated with mainstreamed kids and there are other kids who has various of special needs. Most of them are either 1-1 or 1-2 with a Learning Support Assistant each.
I have not got my case yet, I was suppose to recieve them over the holidays to read about the child's needs and making notes/have ideas but for the moment, I have no idea who I have got.
In Uk, it's as bad too depending on the school, I have been lucky with two (one's all deaf school, another is mainstream with deaf unit) so far and didn't enjoy another school which has resources base who had mixture of different ablities/needs who are ed at grades but they are 2/3 years behind since there is not enough TA to meet their needs we had to juggle for ex, i had a deaf kid, a kid with behav prob and one kid with fine/motor skills hence finds writing difficult, they are at similar level but different ages/ablities, the kid with behav probs doesn't concerate well, I spend alot of time helping kid with fine/motor skills where as the deaf kid who is pretty much able to do the work by himself but he does need help to make sure he had met his targets so does the kid with behaviour problem, he needed 1-1 so that there is no distraction... my heart was always out of my mouth. I feel for the children who end up in the mainstream with hardly any support and feel helpless, like you I stay up at nights worrying about their future, checking over and over again the IEP's etc to make sure they are right for them.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE working with those kids, it's not their fault, what I hate about the job, the hours are long, underpaid, no holiday pay (we may (might be stopped due to goverment cuts!) get 4 weeks paid out of 12 weeks holiday therefore I have another job on top of this job to support myself through holidays) the stress for getting the rights for the kids, sleepless nights. People thought our jobs were easy!!! it's NOT! I won't swap my job for the world otherwise who will the kids have to support them, they need us.