Suchergebnisse

Parents have long played a pivotal and powerful role in advocating for improved services, supports, and increased opportunities for their children with significant disabilities. Yet inclusive opportunities remain strikingly limited in many schools and communities. We examined the viability and impact of parent-led community conversation events as an avenue for launching or strengthening efforts to involve children and youth with disabilities more fully in school, work, and community life. Events were held in 10 locales, used the World Café process by Brown and Isaacs, and addressed specific issues identified by parents (e.g., expanding employment opportunities, recreation options, extracurricular activities, and inclusive education). Interviews with parents and their collaborating partners, observations of the events, and anonymous surveys of more than 300 community members who attended the conversations suggested that the events were successful at accomplishing the goals of promoting greater awareness, generating new strategies and ideas for programmatic changes, encouraging school–community–family linkages, and drawing in new partners. Recommendations for supporting the contributions of parents as leaders in this type of local change effort are provided, along with directions for future research on conducting asset-focused change efforts.