About Us
Mission
The Mission of Somali Parents Advocacy Center for Education is to support, educate, empower and inspire parents to be better advocates for their children, more specifically, their children with special needs in schools, in health care, and in the community
Vision
All families will have all the resources and support they need to ensure that their children are fully participating and contributing members of their community and society without language-culture barriers.
Community Role
Building a movement of parents of children with intellectual disabilities and autism to understand the symptoms and accept potential therapy methods to improve the lives of their children, to stand up and advocate within their own Somali society to be a part of the community and stop the shaming, the shunning, and the internal discrimination going on in order to learn how to take control of their environment to improve the access to quality services available for them and their children.
The mission of the agency is to educate parents on how they can bring about improvements in the conditions of their children and in so doing become an integrated part of the community, in the schools, and in the home. We are
Goals
Build a movement of parents of children with intellectual disabilities and autism to understand the symptoms and accept the potential therapies to improve the lives of their children
Effectively advocate within their own Somali societies to be a part of the community and stop the shaming, the isolation, and the internal discrimination that often comes with diagnosis of a disability
Learn how to access quality services available for families and their children, particularly those children diagnosed with a disability.
Provide advocacy for the parents by creating safe places, building open spaces, and designing new strategies to learn and thrive.
Constituency
The parents of children with autism and intellectual disabilities, physical disabilities, and behavioral health challenges are the primary people we serve. However, our constituency also includes disabilities agencies, school administrators, special education teachers, health care providers, behavioral health practitioners, direct support professionals, and other medical and scientific personnel working with our children with disabilities to improve their conditions, their prognosis, and their abilities to become more independent and make choices for themselves.