Ages 4-18 · Fort Wayne, IN metro area

National Assembly — Fort Wayne, IN

Policy on neurodivergence rarely fails because nobody spoke. It fails because everyone spoke separately, about different things, on different nights. The Fort Wayne, IN metro area has about 466,258 residents, ranking 117th in the country.

Federal special education law, its funding level, and the enforcement behind it are national questions. An assembly of state coalitions can speak to them with the weight of counties behind every sentence.

A monthly meeting in Fort Wayne

1
What is in front of Congress and the agencies
2
What the states are reporting from the ground
3
One national ask, stated the same way everywhere
4
Data the assembly can put its name to
5
Back down the ladder to counties

What families in Fort Wayne, IN ask first

Is this lobbying?

It is organized parent advocacy, which is legal and ordinary.

What can a parent actually change?

Federal special education law has never been funded at the level it promised. That number is a decision.

Do I need to be involved at this level?

No. Most families work at county level and that is the point.

From a room in Fort Wayne to a national count

Step 1
Your circle, in Fort Wayne, IN
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.
Step 2
Your county chapter
Every circle in the county Fort Wayne 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.
Step 3
The Indiana coalition
County chapters send one delegate each. The coalition tracks state bills, testifies at hearings, and works alongside the structures Indiana 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.
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.

Indiana families are not starting from nothing. Under IDEA, every state has a federally funded Parent Training and Information Center; every state also has a Protection and Advocacy agency and a Developmental Disabilities Council. Those exist to be used. What is missing almost everywhere is a local group organized enough to use them together.

If you already run something in Fort Wayne

Keep running it. There is no merger, no renaming, no handing over your members or your money. A group that has been meeting in Fort Wayne for years knows things no statewide organization can generate on its own. Affiliation adds two things and takes nothing: your families are counted in the Indiana total, and your ask is worded the same as everyone else’s so it cannot be answered separately.

Affiliate a Fort Wayne group · What autonomy means here · Start a county chapter

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.