A pilot evaluation of an advocacy programme on knowledge, empowerment, family-school partnership and parent well-being.
A 36-hour advocacy class makes moms savvier and stronger, yet may briefly cool their view of school teamwork.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Dudley et al. (2019) ran a small pilot of the Volunteer Advocacy Project. This is a 36-hour course that teaches parents how to fight for special-education services.
Mothers of children with mixed disabilities took the class. Before and after, the team measured knowledge, empowerment, and how well parents felt they worked with schools.
What they found
Moms left the class knowing far more about special-education law. They also felt stronger and more in control.
Surprise: they rated their teamwork with teachers lower than before. Learning to push for rights may first feel like conflict, not partnership.
How this fits with other research
Whitehouse et al. (2014) showed that moms who do less personal advocacy enjoy better parent-school ties and feel less stress. The new course did the opposite: it boosted advocacy and dropped partnership scores. The two results clash on paper, yet both can be true. The 2014 survey captured steady-state families, while the 2019 class created change. A short-term dip in warmth may be the price of learning to speak up.
Rios et al. (2023) found that Latino parents feel more empowered when they know special-education rules. The 2019 class repeats this link in a new group, giving the knowledge-empowerment pattern a second test.
Callanan et al. (2021) and Anonymous (2024) also ran parent-training pilots. Like Dudley et al. (2019), they saw parent gains, showing that short programs can still move the needle for families.
Why it matters
You can give parents tools without fearing a brief partnership dip. Track warmth with the school for a few weeks, then coach both sides to reset roles. The payoff is parents who stay informed and confident long after the last class ends.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →After your next advocacy session, add a five-minute check-in on parent-teacher warmth and plan one joint goal to keep the partnership alive.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Internationally, it has been recognised that parents need to advocate for their children with disabilities to receive services. However, many parents find advocacy difficult because of systemic and logistical barriers. As such, parents of children with disabilities may seek a special education advocate to help them understand their child's rights and secure services. Yet little research has been conducted about programmes to develop special education advocates. METHODS: In this study, we conducted a comparison study to determine the association of an advocacy programme (i.e. the Volunteer Advocacy Project) on a primary outcome (i.e. special education knowledge) and other outcomes (i.e. family-school partnership, empowerment and parent well-being). Specifically, in 2017, 34 participants, all mothers of children with disabilities, were recruited from disability organisations in the USA. Seventeen mothers participated in the intervention group (i.e. the advocacy training), while 17 mothers participated in the wait list control group. The Volunteer Advocacy Project is a 36 hr advocacy training for individuals to gain instrumental and affective knowledge to advocate for their own children with disabilities and for other families. All participants completed a pre-survey and post-survey; only intervention group participants completed a 6-month follow-up survey. RESULTS: Compared with 17 wait list control group participants, the 17 intervention group participants demonstrated improvements in special education knowledge, P = 0.002, η2 = 0.32, and self-mastery, P = 0.04, η2 = 0.15, and decreases in the quality of family-school partnerships, P = 0.002, η2 = 0.32. At the follow-up survey, intervention group participants demonstrated increases in empowerment, P = 0.04, η2 = 0.29, and special education knowledge, P = 0.02, η2 = 0.38. CONCLUSIONS: Implications for research including the need for a randomised controlled trial are discussed; also, practitioners need to evaluate advocacy training programmes regarding their effectiveness.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2019 · doi:10.1111/jir.12613