Families Helping Families of Jefferson is your one stop shop for disability information. We are the only family resource center for individuals with all disabilities and their families in Jefferson Parish. We offer services across the lifespan. Our advocacy staff is parents of children with disabilities, individuals with disabilities or spouses of individuals with disabilities. We understand the day to day challenges of raising a child with a disability, living with a disability and living with someone with a disability. This gives us a unique perspective that most professionals don't have.
Families Helping Families of Jefferson offers 3 Core Services:
Peer to Peer Support – This is the #1 reason families call us. Everyone needs someone to talk to when they are dealing with challenges in their lives. Frequently parents of children with disabilities don't have family or friends that understand these challenges. When new parents call us their first response is "wow, you get it”. As parents we know firsthand what it's like to raise a child with a disability. We understand the initial grieving process and the eventual amazement the child brings to your family.
Information and Referral – Parents need to be provided good information and connected with appropriate services. Rather than spending endless hours searching the internet for appropriate services, our staff has already done most of this work. We know what services are available through the state, parish and local systems. We've navigated these complex systems and know where the barriers to service exist. You don't have to walk this road alone.
We can put you on the right path and make sure you end up where you supposed to go. In addition we have an extensive lending library on most disability topics. We publish Exceptional Times, our quarterly newsletter and Louisiana Lagniappe, our weekly 2-newsletter. We offer an online blog, LaDisability Talk in addition to most anything you can imagine. If we don't have, we will help you find it.
Education and Training – Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for the rest of his life. This is our motto around education and training. We believe the best thing any parent or individual with a disability can do is empower themselves through education and training to effectively advocate. Nobody cares about your child or yourself more than you do. It is critical that you take this role seriously and learn as much as you can. Children with disabilities can achieve great things, if systems don't give up on them. Often the most successful adults with disabilities are the ones their parents pushed along the way and never allowing the "professionals” to tell them they can't accomplish certain things.
Families Helping Families of Jefferson offers an array of trainings. Some of those include IEP Boot Camps; Progress Monitoring; Communication Skills; Driving with a Disability; Transitioning from High School to Work or Post Secondary School, Basic Individual with Disabilities Education Rights, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and more. Trainings are offered in person, webinar and online. Once a year in December we celebrate National Inclusive School Week by holding our annual conference, inclusionMATTERS during the week. This is Louisiana's largest conference on inclusion education practices.
