Military Families: educational advocacy is within reach with WEG

In the summer of 2008, I sat in my backyard surrounded by the verdant green of our eastern Maryland garden with my daughter and four members of her soon-to-be-ex IFSP team. Their words were all business as we went through what they called her “transition plan,” but their faces were darkly foreboding. My daughter was turning three later that year and would be “transitioning” from one acronym I had finally learned (IFSP - the Individualized Family Service Plan), to another I didn’t fully grasp yet (the terrifying Individualized Education Plan - IEP).

Everything I knew about having an IEP terrified me, and this “transition plan” didn’t feel like support so much as it felt like being made to walk the plank in a pirate movie. My shipmates, no longer accepting me as one of their own, supportively coaxing me off the ship’s edge into opaque and unknowable waters. I am not the only parent who has felt this way, nor is this the only moment in the journey of raising children with special needs that it is common to feel lost, uncertain, and alone.

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Rich Weinfeld, of Weinfeld Education Group (WEG), to talk about the amazing work he is doing to help families like mine and what led him to take up the cause. Rich is a professional educational advocate, and the founder of WEG, a 16-strong team of educational experts. As an educational advocate, his job is to help you navigate the opaque waters of your child’s educational support plan from placement to assessment to a fully formed IEP. “We feel that parents deserve to have an expert by their side,” says Rich, explaining why he works so hard to make advocacy a regular part of the IEP process.

Rich began his career as an elementary school teacher, and though he loved his work it was clear to him that there was a great need among families for professional advocacy. Parents often did not understand the process, did not feel that their children were getting what they needed, and did not know how to get the right support services. “I have always wanted to work with kids, in general, but have always really been interested in the kids who have a potential to do so much more, but there is something that is blocking them from realizing their potential. That is the work that I have dedicated my career to and that is the work that I love,” says Rich. And now his career centers just that: love. WEG strives to provide knowledgeable guidance through a collaborative process of crafting educational supports which truly center the child’s best interest.

Recently, Rich reached out to CareStarter to ask how he could offer his support to yet another group of people who struggle disproportionately to achieve optimum educational support: Military-Affiliated Children. As parents of military kids, we contend with unfamiliar systems, terminologies, and procedures with every new duty station. But all is not lost just because you PCS! A strong IEP at your losing base is just the jumping-off point you need to form a strong IEP at your gaining location. “Federal law clearly states that when a child with an IEP moves from school district to school district anywhere in the United States that their IEP comes with them and the new school district must offer comparable services,” Rich explains.  WEG can help parents settle into new locations too, through their new digital service option. “The beauty of this [digital availability] for a military family is that if you start out in California, we can be with you in California. If the next place you’re stationed is in the Washington DC area, we can stay with you."

Advocacy can also help you to construct a positive relationship with your service team. As parents we often know that our children can do more, but without the right words or knowledge of the system we struggle to be understood by an IEP team. Communication can become frustrated and meetings adversarial. But much of this heartache can be avoided by engaging advocacy early in the process. “The difference in hiring a special education advocate and an attorney is that our total goal and focus is to make sure the child is getting the right educational program, and we believe that’s possible to achieve with the school team, and in, I’d say 90% of our cases we achieve that.” 

Perhaps you’re sold on the benefits of advocacy for your child. Maybe you have even tried to engage an advocate before. But, advocacy is expensive– far beyond the reach of many military families. I brought up just this point with Rich, and together we were able to negotiate an assistance program to make advocacy more accessible to military families. Rich said, “I have come to understand just how strapped financially some military families can be, and I did not have that awareness before." Rich tells me he was surprised to learn just how out-of-reach many of these services are for military parents. I'm thrilled to report that WEG has stepped up to help military families afford the quality advocacy they need!  For more information on WEGs military assistance program, download the .pdf below, or visit https://www.wegadvocacy.com/.

My family eventually got through those early years, and with the help of a dedicated advocate, we learned how to navigate the coming phases. Every step offered new challenges and new opportunities. We could not have gotten through those years without help, and you don’t have to either. At CareStarter, we know that no person exists in a bubble and rarely needs only one service. Please don’t forget to request a CareMap and CareMap updates throughout your journey to make sure that you are getting the best Educational, Recreational, Medical, Nutritional, Therapeutic, and Family resources every step of the way.