NW DOWN SYNDROME PARENT SUPPORT GROUP
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Mission Statement
The NWDSA works to create and nurture a loving and inclusive community celebrating every person with a disability, including Down syndrome. The NWDSA accomplishes this mission by empowering and supporting families and individuals who have been touched by a disability, including Down syndrome. We work to increase education, promote public understanding and acceptance, work toward full inclusion, and defend the civil rights of individuals with disabilities. Our mission embraces professionals and the cross disability community. Our statement of values is the core of our organization and the basis for how we make decisions to support our mission. Our work is intersectional and dedicated to equity. We believe that relationships are the cornerstones of our organization and that they should be both honored and nurtured.
About This Cause
NW Disability Support with its two project organizations NWDSA/ All Born in provides a wide array of programs and services to families of individuals with disabilities, including Down syndrome. Our Down syndrome specific work includes traditional parent and family support such as new parent outreach, phone and in-person support, and drop-in hours, parent-child playgroups and family socials, and awareness programs like the Portland and SW Washington Buddy Walk Festival, which draws over 1400 participants. NWDSA also provides more intensive educational and community-building programs aimed at helping parents and professionals become informed, empowered experts on our children's development, navigating school services, building a path to inclusion in schools and communities, and understanding civil rights and equity issues. Our heart is in social justice, equity, and promoting best practices -- NWDSA's overarching goal is to ensure that families and individuals touched by disability have the tools they need to lead inclusive, self-determined lives. Being in direct contact with over 1,200 local families with Down syndrome in addition to families of children with other disabilities and professionals, NWDSA is able to respond quickly to community needs. For example, when early intervention services were dramatically cut in the early 2000’s, we heard a loud outcry from parents about the resulting void in parent education. In response, we launched the Reciprocal Learning Community (RLC), a collaborative approach to parent education, whereby parents identify needs and professionals bring their expertise to the table. This program, aimed at parents of children birth-five, won the Community Partnership Award from the State DD Council in 2005 for its unique blend of parent and professional expertise, for high attendance and for ensuring access to the Hispanic community. As we began to simultaneously offer advocacy and education support to parents of school-aged children, it became clear that the school barriers faced by children with Down syndrome were not unique to the diagnosis, and we broadened our work to the cross-disability community. NWDSA launched the All Born (In) Movement in 2006 with the first annual All Born (In) Cross-Disability Inclusive Education Conference and a photo awareness campaign. The conference has grown every year – in 2013, we had over 400 participants, including parents, teachers, school administrators, medical professionals and social service providers. The photo awareness campaign has been displayed at schools and meetings around Portland, as well as in the capitol buildings in Salem and Olympia, and even in Washington, DC. We also host a highly successful Kindergarten Inclusion Cohort, providing intensive training for families of children entering kindergarten to allow them to seek and obtain successful inclusive kindergarten placements. Entering its fourth year, the program has a 90% successful placement rate, almost an inversion of the state’s inclusion rate for children entering kindergarten with significant developmental disabilities. All new programming by NWDSA continues to be prioritized in response to needs as identified by the families we work with. NWDSA is led by parents of children with Down syndrome. Parents are the constant in a child’s life, and their involvement and expertise is critical for the long-term success of children with disabilities. The parents who lead NWDSA work to combat the segregation and isolation of families who experience disability by empowering them to follow their dreams for their children in their natural home, school and work communities.