East Bethel mother advocating for the developmentally disabled
As the parent of a daughter with Down syndrome and a son with autism spectrum disorder, Laura McCarthy of East Bethel has grown accustomed to advocating for her children to have access to opportunities afforded to other children.
McCarthy recently completed a training program sponsored by the Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities to better understand the history of the disability and self-advocacy movements and to find out ways to keep change going in a positive direction.
The Partners in Policymaking program has been around for 25 years, but the case worker McCarthy works with on behalf of her nine-year-old daughter Kacie and eight-year-old son Neil had never heard of this program and thus McCarthy was not aware of it. She was attending The Autism Society of Minnesota convention in May 2011 when she discovered it existed. See more in Eric Hagen’s ABC Newspapers story.
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