I believe every state has a free parent advocacy service. I think they're required to, and it's funded by the state. The trick is finding it.
As far as it being the school's responsibility to teach parents what services are available... I can tell you what happened to me... in Missouri, the parent advocacy service is called MPact. I knew it existed and knew what it was. But I didn't know how to contact them. I was not told it existed by the school, but by another parent. The school doesn't like MPact and I think they'd be happiest if parents never knew it existed, because in their eyes MPact causes nothing but trouble. I was trying to find the phone number for them and our internet was down. I called our school, the school board office, the preschool where DS had gone, any place I could think of that might know...
none of them could/would give me the MPact phone number. Most acted like they'd never heard of it. To be fair, a few years ago our local MPact lady was a fireball, and that's putting it nicely. Parents loved her. Schools about threw up at the mention of her name.
Which means, of course, that when DS was diagnosed, nobody sat down with me and said "there are resources for you, here's a list"... in fact, we have a
free my-taxes-paid-for-it parent advocacy service, and several other things, that nobody will tell a parent about. The school won't tell you cause they don't like MPact, the therapists usually won't tell you just cause they are doing other stuff, most mainstream teachers probably don't know it exists, I never at any point had anyone give me a list or brochure or anything, all I ever got was about two zillion copies of Procedural Safeguards.
![Title :lmao: :lmao:](http://www.wdwinfo.com/images/smilies/lmao.gif)
I could go to my son's school, if it was possible, and ask every parent with a kid with an IEP what MPact was, and I'm sure well over half of them would have no idea. When oldest DS was in process of being tested, just like a month ago, the school didn't mention anything other than the school- not our local disabilities center, not our local DMH service, nothing. Yes, I've been down this road before so I didn't really need them to tell me, but I don't think they tell
anyone. Considering that when a child is school-aged, the school is often the first place that a disability is observed, you'd think they would have some tiny responsibility to at least throw a couple of brochures at a parent.