OREGON'S DISABILITY COMMUNITY ADVOCACY RESOURCES

The purpose of this page is to link you to organizations that can assist both family care and professional service providers to approach positive and avoid negative team experiences. Some will provide meeting facilitators, which may be helpful. However, depending on who funds and directs each organization's facilitators, those individuals may function as less than a fully confidential and fiduciary advocate for parents who are struggling in adversarial situations. That is to say, parents need to ask if any facilitator is actually be a system agent that has an obligation or affiliation with the public institution in some formal or informal way. This does not mean you do not want to work with such facilitators, because they can function very well as translators between the worlds of home and school. However, It is important that family members know if facilitators are fully trained in Autism, if they have a favored approach to Autism intervention methods, and if they are your fiduciary advocates and formally netrual facilitators, or special education team members, family case managers, or a more system-oriented case administrator. Hopefully, each person in each role will identify their agency status upfront and also be free to choose to help support your family-centered plans and person-focused goals. However, while anyone can offer help you, only a fiduciary advocate is obliged to do so at all times, according to your wishes.

It is important for all our Autism families to learn about recent changes in federal law that have changed many long-standing rights and routines for problem mediation in informal mediation and formal legal ways. A few of these changes are positive, but many are regressive in nature.

Another significant and troublesome social change parents in Oregon need to be aware of is that there has been an increased presence and involvement of both on-site school police and off-site juvenille justice representatives in Autism education situations, over the last few years. The cases of such incidents that we have been involved in and that have been reported to Threshold give us grave pause. We feel there is growing evidence of greater risk to family integrity and economics due to abuses of police powers, where skilled providership of best Autism practices is what is actually needed. We caution parents to be involved in all aspects of any behavioral issues as they first emerge, and to insist on transparency and immediate reporting of any contact and involvement of the criminal justice system in your families special education programs. Moreover, we feel it is critical that research about the enviromental causes of negative behavior in children with Autism be well-understood and responded to systemically. We would urgently reccommend we immediately begin to work to create clear and rational boundaries between educational and criminal agencies in regard to resolution of behavioral issues for our community. However, we would suggest that, If your child is assigned a probation or parole officer, you immediately begin to help that person gain access to best Autism practice information and training, so they can be a better informed agent in relation to your family member with Autism. Threshold and a number of other private providers are prepared to offer that provider education support at no cost.

For Families in other States: Most states have branches of many of these same organizations in your location, and often more extensive advocacy organizations than we do in Oregon. Just know that each of these organizations can connect you to others. These are a starting place. All these organizatons may also provide training in disability advocacy related issues and skills to help family and service providers develop peer mentoring and peer advocacy skills. We need experienced parents and teachers to participate in strengthening our community in this way!
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Oregon Advocacy Center (OAC)
Contact: Robert Joondeph, Executive Director
Phone: 800-452-1694
Email: oradvocacy@aol.com
Provides federally funded fegal services for families with well-founded grounds for a legal case related to Special Education services, mediation, and due process complaints.

Oregon Parent Training and Information Center (OPTI Center/formerly COPE)
888-505-2673
1754 State Street N.E.
Salem, OR 97303
opti@open.org
Family and Special Education Team training, planning facilitation, and informal mediation. OPTI representatives do not provide fiduciary agents for parents or the educational system. This means they are not advocates for one side or the other. Instead, their organization seeks to provide skilled mediation to help parties negotiate and avoid unnecessary legal conflicts.

The Arc of Oregon
Advocacy for DD & MH
503-581-2726
877-581-2726 (toll-free)
1745 State Street
Salem, OR 97301
www.acroregon.org

Oregon Council on Developmental Disabilities Council (OCDD)
(503) 945-9941
(800) 292-4154
540 24th Place NE
Salem, OR 97301
www.ocdd.org
This organization provides a local newspaper on disability community issues, supports for self-advocacy, Community Partnership projects, and Partners in Policy Making training. Parents can participate in these projects to become more skilled team participants and mediators.

Oregon Family Support Network (OFSN)
OFSN
PO Box 13820
Salem, OR 97309-1820
Parent Only Line 800.323.8521
Phone 503.581.2047
Fax 503.581.4841
E-mail ofsn@open.org
www.ofsn.org