After years of planning and fundraising, Youth Services has just moved into a beautiful new building (after trying to survive in inadequate and uncomfortable space in trailers). Perhaps having the new space will allow this agency -- which has a very good reputation for serving at-risk children -- will be able to focus some attention on children with special needs.

Our own efforts to find something for our son (now a teenager) at Youth Services failed, and I was really quite disappointed by the agency's apparent lack of commitment to providing programming for these kids. They do have one program geared toward children with certain social learning challenges, but seem ill-prepared to run that program competently. I encourage parents with children with special needs who have worked with Youth Services to use JJ's List to report on their experiences, and to encourage Youth Services to make more effort to INCLUDE children with disabilities in their future program planning...

Disability Awareness:   Inflexible service, Unwilling or unhelpful with assistance or accommodations