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Navigating Excellence - Parent Center Assistance & Collaboration Team
Region A E-News
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"For me I am driven by two main philosophies: Know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you."
~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson
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Message From Diana & Michele |
Thanks to all of you for continuing to grow and learn and your hard work to lessen the suffering of others. We so enjoy working with and supporting you!
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Sinergia’s Project Shine (Sexual Health Innovation Network for Equitable Education with Youth with Intellectual Disabilities): Across the country, including blue states like our own NY, sexual education continues to be drastically limited in terms of its provision, access, and scope, even more for those with higher levels of intersectionality, including disability, but especially the neurodiverse. NYS agencies support the neurodiverse community with important reactive services yet do very little to promote critically important aspects of human development—sexual health, reproductive rights, consent, and relationship development—thus not only desexualizing and dehumanizing an entire community, but also, in many ways, promoting a culture to continuously deny and extinguish opportunities to pursue happiness to the I/DD community. That, notwithstanding, healthy curiosity and human development abound and while the NYS legislature fails to act, Project SHINE, composed of seven NY community-based organizations, seeks to answer this call and help bridge this gap by creating solutions centered around the voices of a community we seek to uplift. For more information, click here.
Maine Parent Federation’s Youth Survivors Network: A virtual community for young brain injury survivors (16-25) in the Northeast USA. They share experiences, collaborate on projects, and create a platform for youth and young adults navigating life with brain injuries. Find more information and registration here.
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Upcoming Events/Dates to Remember |
Ask The Experts webinar: The Rise of ‘Dr. Google:’ Youth and Online Health Information: Youth are increasingly accessing health information online, independent of traditional channels of doctor-patient and parent-child communication. What kinds of information are they encountering, and how accurate is it? Are they able to tell the difference between an influencer paid to promote a product and evidence-based medical advice? How can families and communities encourage digital health literacy and help children use a critical lens to find trusted sources for health advice? Join the webinar on Tuesday, January 31st, 11:30 am ET as a panel of researchers and public health experts explore the trends and impacts of youth searching for health guidance on the internet. Click here to register.
Region A Drop-In Call: The February Drop-in call will take place on Tuesday, February 7th, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm, EST. Our featured technical assistance presenter will be Eye to Eye International who will share information about their programs and resources that further their mission to improve the educational experience and outcomes of neurodiverse young people, while engaging them and their allies in the movement for a more equitable and inclusive society. We will also discuss ways you would like NE-PACT to continue to assist you and NE-PACT will use your input in our application to continue to serve as the Region A Parent Technical Assistance Center for an additional 5 years. Check your calendar invite for additional details. Please let us know if you have any agenda items. Click here to join.
Join us for a conversation with Valerie Williams, OSEP Director, and David Cantrell, Deputy OSEP Director. The conversation will take place on February 16th at 4 pm ET. The focus is on the experiences that families have shared with Parent Centers during the ongoing pandemic, the challenges those experiences have posed for early intervention and educational systems, and for Parent Centers themselves. Please note that this is open to Parent Center staff only. Click here to register.
NE-PACT Follow-up Forum: This is an opportunity to continue and expand on the discussions from our Regional Conference. There will also be a session for youth leaders/transition staff from your center. NE-PACT will cover transportation and hotel accommodations for 2 people from your parent center. One of the two people must be the youth leader or transition coordinator at your parent center. The 2023 Follow-up Forum will take place on Monday and Tuesday, April 24th and 25th, 2023 in Philadelphia. More details to come!!
OSEP Leadership and Project Directors’ Conference: Get ready! The 2023 Office of Special Education Programs conference returns in person! OSEP will hold a combined Leadership and Project Directors’ Conference, July 24 – 26, 2023, at the Crystal Gateway Marriott Hotel in Arlington, Virginia. Conference registration and Call for Proposals are anticipated to open later this month. Click here for more information.
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Non-Profit Management Resources |
Parent Center Standards for Non-Profit Management: Interested in seeing how your parent center stacks up against the Parent Center Non-Profit Management Standards? Reach out to your NE-PACT TA provider to access the self-assessment and planning tool!
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Family-Centered Services Resources |
Parent Center Standards for Family-Centered Services: Interested in seeing how your parent center stacks up against the Parent Center Family-Centered Services Standards? Reach out to your NE-PACT TA provider to access the self-assessment and planning tool!
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Youth-Centered Services Resources |
Youth Voice Tip Sheet’s 10 Tips to Improve the Conversation: The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry created a fact sheet to guide how youth and adolescent psychiatrists can effectively communicate. Read more here.
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Staff Development Resources |
CPIR E-Learning Hub: There are dozens of great courses accessible to you and the staff of your parent center - and your whole organization! Sign them up here.
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Are Relationships the Key to Solving America’s School Absenteeism Crisis?: The number of students who’ve gone missing from the classroom has only climbed since the pandemic. These days, 16 million students may be “chronically absent,” according to Hedy Chang, executive director of the nonprofit Attendance Works. That means those students are missing 10 percent of a school year, or more. Read more here.
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Supporting Linguistically Diverse Family Child Care (FCC) Providers: Given what we know about the benefits of maintaining a child’s home language on cultural identity and English language proficiency and the current shortage of providers well-equipped to support Dual Language Learners (DLL), it is important to identify how early childhood education systems can better support and retain current non-English-speaking providers. Click here to see insights from a recent report interviewing Chinese, Tagalog, and Spanish-speaking FCC providers and coaches in California.
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The More the Merrier? Children With Multiple Siblings More Susceptible to Bullying: Competition for limited resources within the family may lead to fight for dominance, study says. Read the full article.
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Seven Suggestions for a Successful Transracial Adoption: When planning to adopt, many people say that the child’s race or ethnicity does not matter. But race and culture do matter, especially to children who have already lost so much. Losing connections to their culture and racial heritage, or being raised in households where their importance is not acknowledged, can affect children throughout their lives. These issues are important to parent center supporting adoptive parents of children who are not of their same race/ethnicity. Click here to see advice and considerations shared by adoptive parents and child welfare professionals.
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Choice/Charter Schools/Virtual Schools/Voucher Programs |
Lawsuit Challenges Illegal Funding of New Hampshire Voucher Program: A lawsuit filed in December charges that New Hampshire’s 2021 private school voucher law, one of the broadest in the nation, violates state statutes governing education funding as well as the state constitution. The suit, Howes v. Edelblut, asks the court to stop the state from transferring millions in public education dollars to the “education freedom accounts” voucher program. For research showing private school voucher programs like New Hampshire’s undermine public education and harm both public and private school students, see Public Funds Public Schools’ fact sheet Research Shows Private School Vouchers Don’t Work for Students and Harm Public Schools. For more information debunking the claim that vouchers are cost effective, see PFPS’s fact sheet on The Myth of Cost Savings from Private School Vouchers.
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Climate of the Learning Environment: Cultural and Linguistic Competence Checklist for Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Training Programs. A major objective of the MCH Training Program is to support trainees, faculty, continuing education, and technical assistance to train the next generation of leaders in maternal and child health. The program places emphasis on interdisciplinary, family-centered, culturally competent care with a population- focused, public health approach. Read more.
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Data Resources: Resources.data.gov is an online repository of policies, tools, case studies and other resources to support data governance, management, and use throughout government. Find out more.
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Discipline & Positive Behavior Supports |
Survey: Understanding how U.S. public schools approach school discipline: How widespread are recent efforts to reform school discipline. How widespread are efforts to reform school discipline? Do zero-tolerance policies remain prevalent? To find out, we and colleagues at the RAND Corporation surveyed 1,080 public school principals across the U.S. in November 2021 using RAND’s nationally representative American School Leader Panel. Survey: Understanding how U.S. public schools approach school discipline (brookings.edu).
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Cultural and Linguistic Competence Assessment For Dispute Resolution Systems: CADRE developed a self-assessment tool to help states take a critical look at the cultural and linguistic competence of their dispute resolution systems and identify strengths and opportunities for growth in order to more effectively meet the needs of the diverse populations residing in their communities. Find it here.
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High School Dropout Rate is Decreasing but Race, Income and Disability Issues Persist: Dropout rates intersect with systemic issues on race, sex, and socioeconomic status. For example, areas with higher student crime rates also experience a large number of high school students dropping out. This article will demonstrate with the statistical data how these issues permeate the education system.
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Early Childhood/Early Intervention |
The Biden-Harris Administration Promotes Access to Early Intervention Services for Infants and Toddlers with Disabilities: Many states report that fiscal constraints and staffing shortages limit their ability to expand access to Part C as well as their capacity to serve children in the program effectively. In response, the Administration has called on Congress to double funding for Part C. The Administration has also awarded millions of dollars from the IDEA Personnel Preparation and State Personnel Development Grant programs to recruit, train, and retain early intervention providers. Read more here.
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Making the Grade 2022: How fair is School Funding in your State?: Covid relief is enabling many districts to address structural deficits caused by chronic state underfunding. But the question now is what will happen when districts spend down their federal pandemic relief? Inequitable state finance systems that caused the essential resource deficits laid bare by the pandemic will again come into focus. The temporary balm provided by Covid relief does not erase the pre-pandemic disparities in school funding documented in this report. Read more.
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Advancing Racial Equity in Early Intervention and Preschool Special Education: The science is clear that the first years of children's lives set the foundation for their healthy development. A young child's race, gender, location, language, and ability should not determine their access to needed services, experiences, and outcomes. This fact sheet provides key information and supporting evidence about racial disparities and inequities for young children with a disability, and questions for state and local leaders seeking to advance equity for all children with disabilities and their families. Click here for the fact sheet.
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Latino Grandfamilies: Helping Children Thrive Through Connection to Family and Cultural Identity: Culturally appropriate services are needed to support Latino families as they navigate kinship care placements, which appeal to the family system fundamental to Latino culture. This toolkit provides cultural context and concrete recommendations to fill a critical gap to help organizations and individuals across the country enhance their understanding and skills to help children and caregivers in grandfamilies thrive. Download the toolkit in English and Spanish, including a survey for caregivers and organizations, and the recording of the release event.
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Grandparents as Caregivers |
When Grandchildren Have Disabilities: As grandparents, we too have had to find our way in relating to him, and I’d like to share some of our observations. We realize that all disabilities are different—whether physical or mental and ranging from mild to severe—and family situations and personalities are unique. All of these affect the grandparent relationship. So, realizing that every situation is different and there’s no single “right” way to be a grandparent, here are some principles to consider.
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Meet the new faces of homelessness; children and teens: Each year millions of kids and teens wake up in a place they can’t call home. For some, their bed is in a shelter. For others, it’s in a car or on the street. Homelessness can have lasting effects on the physical and mental health of young people for many years to come. In a report card on the state of youth homelessness in the United States, the Department of Education estimated that 2.5 million children lacked a permanent home at some point during 2013. This represents an increase from 1.5 million in 2006. Read more here.
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Better Defined by Their Strengths: 5 Ways to Support Students with Learning Differences: We invited our social media followers across Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to weigh in on the most effective way schools can better support students with learning differences. Responses ranged from shifting educators’ mindset, like highlighting student strengths, to more far-reaching changes that would require school wide or district support. Click here to read what educators have to say.
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How Immigration Has Enriched American Holidays and Traditions: Immigrants and refugees from all over the world have brought their unique, diverse traditions to popular holidays in the United States. Some, like the Swahili names of Kwanzaa candles and the Scottish New Year’s Eve song Auld Lang Syne, have obvious international roots. Others, like mistletoe at Christmas, jack-o-lanterns at Halloween and chocolate bunnies at Easter, may surprise you with their origins. Read on to learn just some of the ways immigration has shaped our celebration of Labor Day, Halloween, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Eve and Easter. Read more.
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Transitioning to an Inclusive Setting: Five strategies for districts, schools, and families: Read this article from SWIFT Education Center where Simon’s mother shares strategies that helped to ease the way through her sons inclusion journey.
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Juvenile Delinquency/Juvenile Justice |
Virginia School Shooting Test How Young is Too Young to be Prosecuted: Also unique to the U.S. is the fact that prosecutors are reportedly weighing whether to bring charges against the boy accused of the Virginia shooting. Internationally, the average age of criminal responsibility is 14 years old. Virtually every country on earth explicitly prohibits prosecutors from charging children under 7 with a crime. Virginia, by contrast, is one of 24 states in the U.S. that has no minimum age for prosecution, according to the National Juvenile Justice Network, a fact the group calls “shocking to the conscience.” Read more here.
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Community Engagement: An Essential Component of an Effective and Equitable Substance Use Prevention System: Substance use disorders (SUDs) are among the most common disabling conditions in the United States. They have the potential to impair a person’s ability to work, engage in relationships, maintain mental health, connect with community, and carry out activities of daily life. Substance use affects all Americans and all communities—the young and old, all racial and ethnic groups, people of all abilities, and people of all sexual orientations, gender identities, or sex characteristics. Substance use affects both under-resourced and affluent neighborhoods. It impacts all community sectors: business, education, health care, law enforcement, social services, and more. Learn more.
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Military Families & Youth |
Military parents can now get up to 12 weeks paid leave: Military service members who have recently given birth, adopted children or are fostering children long-term now have 12 weeks of paid leave, the Department of Defense announced. The move is an expansion of the Military Leave Program and applies to service members on active duty for 12 months or more. Get more information here.
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The Child Mind Institute Video on Cyberbullying and Native American Resource on Cyberbullying and Sexting: Cyberbullying continues to be a significant issue in the lives of middle schoolers and older teens. Students, and their parents, often don't know how to address this form of bullying. Dr. Jamie Howard, clinical psychologist with The Child Mind Institute was interviewed live on CBS Mornings to provide guidance to parents on tackling cyberbullying. Watch the 4-minute 14-second video here. Also, in CPIR's Native American Resource Collection, you will find a brief on cyberbullying and sexting. Please share with all parents, especially Native American families. It is available here.
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Parent/Family Engagement (and Youth!) |
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Poverty, Family Involvement, and Children’s Reading Skills: Parent involvement has a positive impact on children’s reading skills, but that impact can be contingent on what occurs within the classroom. This study underscores the need to consider both home and school influences on children’s reading skills. Implications for educational practice and policy are discussed. Read more.
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Remote Learning/School Reopening |
Is Remote Learning Here to Stay? Yes, But It Needs to Get Better: Many educators see virtual learning as inferior to in-person learning or totally ineffective. Others, though, see it as a great new path forward. What does the research say about the quality of virtual learning? Is the truth somewhere in between? Read more here.
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More than 2,000 students restrained or secluded in CT schools 2020/21: More than 2,000 Connecticut special education students were restrained or secluded a total of 23,511 times in 2020-21. Use of the controversial techniques led to 134 injuries, including six that met the criteria for "serious" injury, the data showed. Advocates continue to urge schools to reduce the use of restraint and seclusion, which they describe as dangerous and even traumatic for students and staff. Read more here.
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Social-Emotional Learning |
My students were grieving. This assignment helped me understand their experiences: It was spring 2022 and we were completing our first full year of in-person learning since the start of the pandemic. The kids had been through so much. We all had. Read more.
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Examples of Assistive Technology in the Classroom: Students often learn best by doing. Assistive technology uses this concept, supplying students with hands-on learning aids to make learning fun and less stressful. Each assistive technology tool strengthens a student’s skill set through the act of playing, and many of these devices are outfitted with vibrant colors and engaging designs that fuel a student’s empowerment for learning. Read more.
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Transition to Adult Life/Youth |
Lois Curtis’ Legacy Lives on in the People With Disabilities Whose Lives She Transformed: Few people outside of the disability community know Lois Curtis' name. But for those whose lives her Supreme Court case touched and transformed, her impact will never be forgotten. The 1999 case led to more states allocating funding for people with disabilities to live in their own homes. Read about the landmark case here.
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ABOUT THE REGION A PARENT TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE CENTER
The Navigating Excellence-Parent Assistance and Collaboration Team (NE-PACT), the Region A Technical Assistance Center, provides technical assistance to federally-funded parent centers -- Parent Training and Information Centers (PTIs) and Community Parent Resource Centers (CPRCs) - NEPACT Logolocated in the states of CT-AFCAMP, CT-CPAC, DC-AJE, DE-PIC, MD-PPMD, ME-MPF, MA-FCSN, NH-PIC, NJ-SPAN, NJ-ASCF, NY-AFC, NY-CIDA, NY-LIAC, NY-UWS, NY-Starbridge, NY-INCLUDEnyc, NY-Sinergia, NY-PNWNY, PA-HUNE, PA- ME, PA-PEAL, PR-APNI, RI-RIPIN, VI-DRVI and VT-VFN. These Parent Centers are independent non-profit organizations. We also provide support to emerging parent centers and parent organizations serving families of children with or at risk of being identified as having disabilities. In addition, we work with early intervention and education agencies (local, state and federal level) seeking information regarding best practices in involving parents of children with disabilities in systems improvement.
The center activities are specifically designed to:
- Enhance the capacity of parent centers to provide effective services to families of children with special needs and to work effectively with their states to improve special education and early intervention systems; and,
- Facilitate their connections to the larger technical assistance network that supports research-based training, including educating parents about effective practices that improve results for children with disabilities. For more information click here.
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