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Ellis Abel Learns.
Parent Advocacy Training — Ellis Abel Learns neurodivergent parent mastermind group icon, for families of children aged 4-18.

Ages 4-18 · every US county

Parent Advocacy Training

Skills, not sympathy. How to prepare for a meeting, what to put in writing, how to ask a question that has to be answered, and when to stop negotiating and use a process. Every state has a federally funded parent center and almost nobody uses it.

Available in all 4,299 US metro areas, cities and counties listed below.

What a meeting looks like

  1. 1

    Meeting preparation — the one page you bring

  2. 2

    Putting a request in writing so it starts a clock

  3. 3

    Asking questions that require an answer on record

  4. 4

    Your state's parent center and how to use it

  5. 5

    Role play one real upcoming meeting

Questions families ask first

I am not a confrontational person.

Most effective advocates are not. Preparation does the work.

What is a parent center?

Every state has one, funded under federal special education law, free to families.

Do I need a lawyer?

Usually not, and knowing when you do is part of the training.

From one circle to a national count

  1. Step 1

    Your circle,

    Eight to twenty families who meet monthly. Local operations stay local: your meeting time, your venue, your rules, your members. Nothing about joining changes how your group runs.

  2. Step 2

    Your county chapter

    Every circle in the county New York sits in reports one number — how many families it speaks for — and agrees on three asks per school year. The chapter is who a school board, a superintendent or a county commission talks to.

  3. Step 3

    The New York coalition

    County chapters send one delegate each. The coalition tracks state bills, testifies at hearings, and works alongside the structures New York families already have a legal right to: the state's federally funded Parent Training and Information Center under IDEA, its Protection and Advocacy agency, and its Developmental Disabilities Council.

  4. Step 4

    The national assembly

    State coalitions meet quarterly. One count, one set of federal priorities — IDEA funding, evaluation timelines, restraint and seclusion, transition services, and the gap between what the law says and what a district does.

Advocacy Training — 4,299 places across America

Every metro area, principal city and county in the United States. No place is too small.

Alabama (87)
Alaska (33)
Arizona (43)
Arkansas (86)
California (273)
Colorado (85)
Connecticut (27)
D.C. (1)
Delaware (5)
Florida (158)
Georgia (185)
Hawaii (8)
Idaho (54)
Illinois (155)
Indiana (117)
Iowa (112)
Kansas (116)
Kentucky (129)
Louisiana (81)
Maine (21)
Maryland (35)
Massachusetts (53)
Michigan (120)
Minnesota (111)
Mississippi (88)
Missouri (131)
Montana (61)
Nebraska (97)
Nevada (22)
New Hampshire (13)
New Jersey (45)
New Mexico (40)
New York (90)
North Carolina (127)
North Dakota (57)
Ohio (124)
Oklahoma (88)
Oregon (51)
Pennsylvania (88)
Rhode Island (6)
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (5)
South Carolina (65)
South Dakota (68)
Tennessee (114)
Texas (340)
Utah (48)
Vermont (16)
Virginia (158)
Washington (77)
Washington, D.C. (1)
West Virginia (64)
Wisconsin (95)
Wyoming (25)

The rules that make it work

Local groups keep local control

Your meetings, your members, your money, your name. Affiliation adds a count and a shared ask. It never adds a boss.

Nobody is diagnosed here

This is a working group of parents, not a clinical service. Families share what they did and what happened. Nobody prescribes, nobody treats, nobody assesses.

Experience is shared as experience

What one district approved is a fact worth passing on. What worked for one child is a data point, not a prescription. That distinction is enforced in every meeting.

The child is not the problem to be solved

The systems around the child are. Meetings are about paperwork, access, instruction and policy — not about fixing children.

One ask, said the same way

A group of forty saying forty different things is still forty individuals. The count only becomes power when the ask is identical.

The infinity symbol, not the puzzle piece

Neurodivergent people are not missing a piece. The language and the symbols used here follow the community that lives it.

Other circles

All circle types