OSEP Funded Parent Centers
Parent Centers - Parent Training and Information Centers (PTIs) and Community Parent Resource Centers (CPRCs) - in each state provide training and information to parents of infants, toddlers, children, and youth with disabilities and to professionals who work with them. This assistance helps parents to participate more effectively with professionals in meeting their children’s educational needs. The Parent Centers work to improve outcomes for children ages birth-26 years with all disabilities (emotional, learning, cognitive, and physical).
The Family Support Center on Disabilities: Knowledge & Involvement Network
offers a centralized resource to individuals with disabilities, their families and the public on the full range of options available to them. Their goal is to help realize the purpose of the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act of 2000 to assure that "Individuals with developmental disabilities and their families participate in the design of and have access to needed community services, individualized supports, and other forms of assistance that promote self-determination, independence, productivity, and integration and inclusion in all facets of community life, through culturally competent programs."The Medicaid Reference Desk Project
continues the design and implementation of an interactive website to provide people with developmental disabilities, their families, and others with timely, accurate state and national level information on Medicaid services. The project will serve as a nationwide resource by providing research, translation, and audio/video recording of comprehensive Medicaid information for each state and territory. The website will build upon its cognitively accessible format by:
- Providing current state-specific Medicaid services information, including printable resource sheets, in everyday language.
- Offering a cognitively accessible, person-centered planning module that will allow a person with a developmental disability and/or family member to produce a "proposed list" for their service coordinator of the services in their state that they want to become independent.
- Disseminating information about the project to a variety of audiences through an on-line annual briefing book and printable brochures.
- Showcasing an expanding collection of stories that communicate in everyday language the constructive experiences of people with developmental disabilities benefiting from Medicaid funding to create options and choices in their lives.