ABOUT PLD

The Parent Leadership Development Project:
Empowering Families of Children with Special Needs

Overview

The project provided leadership training and support to parents of young children with disabilities (birth to five years). By preparing families to be effective leaders in early intervention, the project was designed to address the critical need to promote early intervention services that are family centered, inclusive, and culturally sensitive. At the same time, the project responded to parents' continuing need for information about local, state and national resources that exist to support families of young children with disabilities. Another important goal of the project was to assist professional groups in developing strategies for increasing parent representation and leadership throughout the early intervention system.

The Mission

• To support parents across the state who wish that they had a stronger voice in the services their children receive, and who want to improve services for all children in their community.
• Empower and support families who want to contribute to the field of early intervention. Over the next two years, PLD offered training to parents across North Carolina to prepare them to serve in a variety of leadership roles, working collaboratively with involved professionals.

Key components:

• A series of leadership retreats for parents that focus on leadership training and essential information about the early care and intervention system
• Individualized follow-up activities with parents as they develop a leadership vision, implement a leadership action plan, create a portfolio highlighting their leadership roles and experiences, and continue to learn about the early care and intervention system
• Linking parent graduates to leadership opportunities and providing training to professionals about effective methods for involving parents as leaders in early intervention
• Evaluating the parent leadership development model and disseminating products that will help others interested in creating parent leadership training opportunities to do so.

The goals of PLD retreats were to help families:

• learn about the early care and intervention system,
• identify other state and local resources for young children and families, meet other parents and professionals in leadership roles,
• develop leadership skills such as public speaking, serving on a task force or advisory board, or acting as a mentor to another parent.

Parent Leadership Development Project
FPG Child Development Institute
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill