Why You Need A Parent Advocate

Every parent needs an advocate.

I know, I know. Of course I’m going to say that. I’m a paid advocate trying to drum up business. And yes, I’d love it if you hired me. But even if you don’t, you still need an advocate. It doesn’t even have to be a paid one. Maybe I’ll write a future blog post on your options.

For now, I want to focus on why every parent needs an advocate. There are two reasons.

Parents don’t know what they don’t know.

Special education is confusing. There are so many laws, policies, timelines, acronyms, and data sources. None of them are intuitive—even when they seem to be.

Just recently, I had a family try to enact Stay Put to prevent their child’s classroom from being changed. It was logical. When you enact Stay Put, the school can’t change your child’s placement until the dispute is resolved. They literally have to let your kid stay put.

Except Stay Put did not apply here because it was not a change of placement. Confusing, right? He was being placed in a different class. That is a physical change of placement. But in education, “change of placement” does not refer to a physical location. It refers to educational placement. Since the classroom switch did not change any of the services on his IEP, it was not considered a change of placement.

The point is: even the most educated, informed, experienced parents misinterpret and misunderstand their rights without realizing it. I regularly have parents come to me with complaints about IEP implementation. They tell me the school is not providing the services outlined in the IEP. When I read the IEP, I often discover that they misunderstood part of it, the school did not thoroughly review it before having them sign, or the wording was crafted in a way that created a loophole.

A good advocate knows edu-speak, understands the special education process and all aspects of an IEP, and can read the subtext in what the school is saying or proposing in paperwork.

Parents bring emotion to the table.

I want to be clear: this is not a bad thing. It is our job as parents to fiercely protect our kids and fight for them. However, sometimes those emotions can cloud our judgment. Sometimes we become so focused on the life we want for our child that we lose sight of the big picture.

Here’s an example. I had a parent bring me in for a mediation. She had filed an OCR complaint against the school for valid—and infuriating—reasons. The mediation went as well as it could. The school agreed to all of our requested changes to the student’s education and collaborated on terms to prevent something similar from happening to other students.

Afterward, the mom messaged me to say thank you. She confessed that she would not have settled if I hadn’t been there and that I had been the voice of reason.

The truth is, while the mediation went well, it didn’t make up for the harm that had been done. There was nothing the school could do to undo what had already happened, nor were they going to blatantly admit wrongdoing and open themselves up to litigation. So Mom was still left with residual anger. Her sense of justice was still unsatisfied—even though she’d gotten everything she asked for.

If I hadn’t been there, that parent would not have signed and would have deprived her child of the support she fought for. OCR would have had to conduct a full investigation. That investigation could have left her child unsupported for longer and possibly ended with the school having to provide fewer services.

Having continued to work with this family, I can tell you that signing the mediation agreement was the right decision. Her child is supported and doing well now.

So, if you have a child with a disability—or a child you suspect may have a disability—please do yourself a favor and find an advocate to support you. Having someone experienced as an extra set of eyes and ears, and as a logical collaborator, can save you from problems down the road.