we are different by design:

​BETTER ADVOCACY

1. Special Education advocacy, when done by non-legal professionals can do more harm than good.

2. Advocates that are funded by a state or the federal government may have a conflict of interest.  They are not working exclusively for your family's best interests. They may seek to avoid conflict by promoting compromise or helping the school to avoid legal liability. This could result in poorer outcomes for your child.

3. Private advocates make more money by working longer hours on your case. They also probably won't use an approach designed to preserve your legal options, because they don't know how to, strategically.  

4. Only an experienced special education attorney knows the case law and legal strategies to provide you all of your options after a review of documentation and a consultation with your family.

5. ParentAdvocate provides you and your advocate that critical initial legal consultation for free by referring you to LegalAction, a law corporation's AdvocacyProject. During your consultation, you will choose from the options presented to you. Then, you will receive a guide to follow either with your advocate or by yourself. 

6. The Guide may advise you to call an IEP meeting and advocate for better services, or you might choose to bring a dispute to a hearing if you already tried to advocate and have the evidence you need to support a case. You will decide your next move based on consultation with an experienced special education attorney. 

7. The Guide will lay out all of the tasks needing completion, so you can be in control of the number of hours you need to pay an advocate to help you. Or, you can choose to do it by yourself.

8. In this way, even if you need to call another IEP meeting, you will know how to preserve your legal options should the IEP not result in appropriate services for your child. You will also be able to understand what an advocate can do and how much it will cost., upfront.