Disability Support

The Internet can help you feel supported in your journey of parenting a child with special needs by helping you find other families who are having similar experiences. You can share information and give and receive emotional support, without ever leaving your computer. You can access this support at any time of day, no baby-sitter or car required. There are a variety of ways to find people with whom you can share your experiences and seek and give support.

One way of connecting with others is through a list serve. When you subscribe to a list serve you join a mailing list community of people who want to discuss a particular topic. You send a message asking to subscribe and then all messages that are sent to the list will be sent to your address as well. Everything you write to the list serve will be sent to everyone who subscribes to the list. You can also choose to correspond with someone from the list privately, by sending that person an e-mail to his or her address directly, rather than to the list. There are lists on every topic imaginable and many specifically for parents of children with disabilities.

A great place to get started finding a list serve for a specific disability or health issue is "The Children's Disability List of Lists", an annotated list of list serves about children's disabilities.
http://www. comeunity.com/disability/speclists.html

For local support, the NJ Early Intervention System sponsors two list serves, one for professionals and one for families in early intervention.

Online Professional Support Community

Online Families Support Community

Please come back and visit us again as we will be continually adding online support resources to this page.