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State Leaders Summit : Making a Commitment to Systems Change in Deaf Education
May 7, 8 & 9, 2007, Columbia , MD
Session Date and Time: May 8, 2007 8:30 to 9:30
Name of Facilitator/Presenter Lisa Crawford
Name of Recorder Leeanne Seaver
E-mail Address Leeanne@handsandvoices.org
Parent and State Agency Collaboration
Key Issues or Points of Discussion:
- What is the role of parents in systems - how can this be increased and more meaningful?
- How do states fund parent organizations (ex used was Hands & Voices) when they aren't supposed to give money to just one parent group?
- Privacy issues - how do states release to parent groups doing outreach?
Solutions/Strategies; Commitments of Participants; Improvement Suggestions:
- We hired a parent consultant to do screening follow-up with families at the 0-3 stage. ( Indiana )
- We use Guide By Your Side Parent Guides to do follow thru as a phone call. Guides are connected to the Early Intervention/EHDI and hospitals. EHDI notifies county when a child has been identified and they expect a kid to check-in. ( Wisconsin )
- In Florida , districts often run their own intervention programs but rural areas are very inconsistent. One challenge is getting different stakeholder groups together because they divide over modality. Without a statewide parent group, parents don't know how to get involved.
- In our state many different parent groups and agencies splinters the collaboration. We need one overall group with one source of funding.
- Hands & Voices was the solution in our state because it brought every one together on common issues. No modality controversies came up (MN)
How do you address transition with families?
- We get families involved and attending workshops.
- We experienced frustration with non-attendance at parent events, but we realized that parents are all at a different level. Some or their needs are met via email, some through a newsletter, and through collaboration of the Parent Education Connection to our IA Hands & Voices Chapter. We added Hands & Voices Guide By Your Side .
Do parent groups share databases? How does good collaboration work?
- We are starting a Hands & Voices chapter; we do regional events for all agencies.
- CA - We need to find out why parents aren't coming. We need better understanding of why they aren't involved. We need a survey to know their issues. We need one central organization.
- We have lots of agencies - strong existing groups. But families are not feeling a part of that. So we started Hands & Voices and we had 35 parents come to our first planning meeting. They have heard so much bias and now they want a group that supports all options where parents can come together for their own agendas.
- Parents get involved when they are in crisis at various stages. It is not a constant - their involvement beyond that depends on their education level.
- A very popular topic for parents in our state is "Survival Tips" because they don't have a clue how to begin. It helps having contact when another parent of a deaf kid tells them it's OK. Parent events are sometimes just one more thing on top of audiology, therapy, school meetings, etc.
- Older parents are wonderful mentoring sources. We need one central resource point.
- In our state, the parent group is actually modeling collaboration to the professional groups/agencies/organizations who are the ones most guilty of methodology wars.
- ASDC is not just a signing organization - our parent groups need to come together. The DHH adult support systems are a huge change once you leave public school.
- Kids failing in mainstream come to our deaf school at 14. We need to make change happen.
- As a state organization, we have trouble getting parent names and addresses to get our information to them.
Resources:
www.pepnet.org - a good resource for post-secondary resources.
www.handsandvoices.org
www.deafkids.org
www.agbell.org