Resources for Families

Caring for a child with special needs can be a challenging journey we know from experience. You wouldn't strap skis on a someone who'd never taken a lesson and push them down a mountain, yet that's just how it can feel as a parent. It can be all-too easy to lose sight of supporting yourself and your family, which is why its important to understand that you don't need to this alone. There are many resources that are available to you that can  provide information and guidance to navigate the systems, and who can help you to connect you to services and support networks of families who've been there before, who can offer advice or just a welcome ear. 

Our hope is that Reading SEPAC can provide some small measure of this directly through our education and community building activities, but also post some guideposts to get you started finding the additional resources you and your family will need throughout your journey. Toward that aim, these pages focus on providing links and descriptions to resources and support services, some general and some specific to navigating the special education process. These tend to be state or national, while we've broken out specific programs and information for the Town of Reading Massachusetts here. 

While we can't hope to catalog all of the resources that are available for families, our hope is that we can at least help you get started and shorten your path to finding the guidance and support your family needs. No doubt on your way, you'll find many resources we've missed. Please let us know and we'll add them shorten the journey for new families.