following positions in the u s senate in washington and high tech communications in boston his experience includes nine years as a field office director and corporate fundraiser for special olympics and he received his m p a from harvard kennedy school where he is a harvard alumni public service follow and he is a b a from holy cross and hilary is the director of community programs and it's an exceptional lives she's a licensed so called social worker focusing on program development she state why did collection effort her at risk providing social welfare insight into service outcomes hilary has a clinical and research background working with individuals with disabilities and their families and earn her m s w m b a from state and speaking of special olympics i can actually see the softball field where i get to coach each summer one of the unified softball teams from the belmont sport support rocks if it does so again to kind of summarize and introduce exceptional lives we're nonprofit based in massachusetts born and bred in massachusetts and we produce free online guide to help parents of children or adults with developmental disabilities navigate through some of the challenging issues they face including special education and the i e p process social security and other disability and government benefits health insurance including mass health and guardianship and the alternatives to guardianship and that's just for guides which will talk a little bit more about in this introduction that's where we started we just launched these four free guides ten weeks ago so we're still brand new and part of what we're here to do tonight is to learn from you the parents who are able to join us here on this cold and are trying to solve the problem we're trying to solve is information overload not only information overload but the decreasing amount of time that parents have to digest and extract relevant information from the overwhelming amounts of information both online and offline that are out there regarding some of these disability issues so few parents have the time  the research shows that the burden of time required to get relevant information leads to increased stress and anxiety missed opportunities to access needed services and resources and support so the solution that we have come up with after release thoroughly studying what solutions were out there in the information presentation field were these free online as you'll see in a moment we adopt this innovative question and answer format to walk you through customized halfway through these otherwise complex processes nobody else  least as far as we looked and we looked hard another layer massachusetts but across the country and around the world nobody is adopting this kind of in an innovative information delivery format what that means to the individual parent is that you we hope and we're still new still learning still getting better but you based on the answer you get information that is customized to you you don't see what's not relevant unless you really want to see everything which case you can do that these guys are free always accessible via the internet be exceptional lives dot org jeremy if it if at all it's possible to actually put the website up there you know please do exceptional lives dot or the home pages of here on the screen a little bit more about our solution to this information problem the content you do see we have sourced from subject matter experts sometimes those are  professionals like attorneys education having kids government agency officials sometimes parents parents often are the experts because they have walked through these processes before and they have this kind of hard earned hard won knowledge in their head what these guys represent is a way to kind of take that harder knowledge and pass it on especially to parents who have not gone through the process process before we're just getting the diagnosis or just in covering a process for the first time whether that's because their child is aging and which area or perhaps they get a diagnosis you know later in life or for other reasons  another thing that we think sets these guides apart is we focus we try to focus on actionable steps things that you can do in the real world whether it's filling out  form or accessing calling a resource at the right time and the right step of the process so that we don't overload you with just reams of information we try to focus you on the actual steps and if you want some more of that context we can provide that for you as well as we'll see a moment what we're hoping to do at the end of the day is replace the sort of one size fits all way that information typically today is for violence whether that through dense websites which are really hard to navigate through biomarkers or books or weekend long conferences in powerpoint and other resources online what we're trying to do is do some of the hard work internet connection and so we're going to introduce especially to the crowd at home what our workshop is going to kind of explore in the hours together feedback during these early stages so  to matter what device you have you ought to be able to use it so thank you i'm going to ask the folks who are here to maybe wait until we can get to the workshop part that way be kind of more directly from your experience so if you want to kind of check out the website before we get into the guides great but i'll just ask you to hold that off for a few minutes on getting into individual guides if you can't briefly our home page tells hypothetical story of how a parent would walk through a benefit from a guide in his view is fifteen minutes as you'll see here each of these in a moment how to apply for s s i and other government disability benefits and how to explore guardianship or alternatives to guardianship so i'll start with the ip guide i'm going to take a few steps through experiencing say the i e peace cycle for the first time or your child is approaching age eighteen and you know you need to check out s s i and guardianship an eighteen to big kind of age for changes that might affect your eligibility first for some of those services a need for some of the guardianship or alternatives so i'll ask you to do that if you do do that you may get an email from us asking you if you would be willing to have a phone call or conversation with us much like what we're doing here in the workshop to get your feedback all the feedback helps us to reprove in these early stages these guides for not only you but for other parents i mean after you so as we click through  the first thing we see is just a little bit more about the i e p guide this is a way for you to quickly scan a few paragraphs and simple points what is inside the guy so you can make a decision as to whether or not you know this this guy is for you so some of the questions as we'll see here that we address is are things like plan and what happens if you believe you should be eligible for your piece services and your tonight what's the what do you do next there so that's just a few of the examples of the questions that these guys are meant to address and that's just really you know part of it so we're going to jump into the guy here which can take a few steps through each so especially you hope can get a a what we call a welcome screen i'll give you the highlights here  but in this case for an i u p guide we tell you what the guy goals are for the ip guides to navigate the process of going through the special education planning and what you're eligible for  a how to create an effective law you please and make sure that you're getting the right placement sometimes it's not always a friendly process for parents but we try to empower the parent to know the party process and to get what's right for your child doesn't guarantee that you'll get special education services but it can help you understand eligibility and then how to navigate the process so you'll see here  mentioned earlier if you want some more context not everybody in even knows an ip is we provide it with a simple optional pop up boxes we explain or define some of the turn some of the key laws involved and then you notice here that we cite the information sources that these come from these are all coming from quality reputable sources we can close out of that and we're still  continuing through the  guide you'll see this out pop up box as we take our first step through here we're asking you to simply sign up what that means is you give your name e mail and password that you create and that allows you to do two things to get support on the spot you can call us you can e mail us you can even text us right from inside the guide or through the exceptional eyes website but by signing up it also allows you to come back tomorrow next week and pick up a process that you've already started we allow you to pick up where you left off that's all that means you're not signing up for anything else or giving any other information so to say no now just to go through i've already signed up so that would be redundant for me we ask you a few quick questions this is simply to understand who are audiences six questions on  and then here here's a you'll find our first question and again we use the answers to show you what's relevant to you and to walk you walk you down that customized path in filter out what's not relevant to you the first question here is are you is your child already eligible for a special special education if you know this then what we'll do is we'll skip you to the next part of the guide if you're not sure or they're not yet eligible to walk you through that evaluation process and how to understand that the right questions of the school system about getting that hellas ability determination yes or no and then again  disagree we'll show you what you can do next the other part of this guys have to do with once you're eligible if you are eligible creating the most effective part or chapter of the guy is getting the right place and now that you determine what services that you are going to get through special education for your child what setting are those services going to come what type of classroom what type of school setting and cetera so those are the basics on the guide from what our early users are telling us this is particularly good for parents who are new to the process or who haven't really become confident in how to navigate and get the process right for veterans of a parent you can still go through this and what we're hearing from them is it's this is validating what they already know and kind of reassuring them that they are out of place for they are doing the right things in the i p process so  those are the different types of value that we could potentially provide the different types of parents based on their experience level so i'm a i'm going to go back and take a few steps through the health insurance now the health insurance guide each guide to structure differently because each process is different in this case we try to by asking you questions about your current coverage in massachusetts or so percent of people have coverage in you somewhere between ninety eight ninety nine so basically if you have cover net or other options here in massachusetts so i'm going to pop into the health insurance guide and you'll see that after the welcome screen which takes you through what i just said about whether you do or do not have coverage will walk you through the very first question in a series into this question you are on your customized path through this health insurance guide is your family member with disabilities your child with disabilities covered by health insurance so if you're like most  and then we have a follow up question so the next question and we're further on a path to my zinger individualizing the information what type of health insurance you have is your primary plan if you're like many people here in massachusetts you have a to skip through to after a few administrative screens we ask you you know you have a private private plan through work do you also have this health this is a great nugget of wisdom that a lot of parents putting a parent that we met at a c pack meeting in the past week i didn't find out about until years after they could have taken advantage of it so if you like that this parent you would say no i don't have mail so i didn't think i was qualified for that and then you get this train service one of the actual screens that we're talking about in which we in four of the parents are using these guides that regardless of income you have a child where a certain type of disability is a pretty broad set that your child may be eligible for a certain type of now so that you can get as  might not have and if we can accelerate the time for a new parent to access that program or those programs to get the services and to get the reimbursement help then exactly wh know a few steps take a few minutes most people are going through these guides are really taking a pass through in thirteen or fifteen minutes sometimes taking a few more but we can kind of help you do something to understand s given those kind of new roles so as you'll see and that's that those are some of the things that we explain in in this website page here but let's launch right into the guide which obviously you can do it any time believing that one of the orange actually buttons another welcome screen we tell a bit more about what s s i can do for you who this guy just for and what the goals of the guy are so you can kind of see that consistent theme throughout the life guards and the s s i case if we help you to determine that you are eligible or your child is eligible whether they're younger or older than eighteen well they tell you how to apply  so in the internet age we think this is a good alternative to simply calling or going to the social security office and waiting in line or waiting on hold we can empower parents to kind of make these determinations  themselves since more more parents are going to the internet first to try to find out this kind of information then that's what this guy is designed to do so i'll take a few quick steps like the ip guide you can pop open a box learn a little bit more about s s i what the program is who it's for when to apply again purely optional that extra level of detail that some parents want but not all parents want that's what we make it hard still and it's the it's the background info it's not the kind of action steps so just like the other guides we ask you to sign up to help give you better support and to allow you to come back and pick up if ever you want to stop and start again tomorrow next week and again you'll see an early question  in this case the key question with s s i is age the age of your child with disability so if they're younger than seventeen so security counts much of the parent's income and assets and that kind of knocks off from eligibility a lot of families even working class families middle class families the child may not be eligible until he or she reaches eighteen because that point of  age eighteen social security counts resources and income differently stop counting the information resources of a parent not every parent knows that especially a parent whose child is they're not scrambling to apply and maybe losing out on benefits for months if not the tension the years so we'll say the child is eighteen or older in this case actually no will say will say and through this path there are three major eligibility checks disability household income and household resources and in one or two screens each we give you the  is high functioning we help give you some background on whether or not your child may be eligible and frankly if your child may be eligible and you know it sure will encourage you to go go on through the process  because it's possible that you're eligible you want to apply but if you know that you're not going to be eligible or not yet based on the age of your child we're going to save you the time we're going to try to anyway  we have to answer the question will say yes my child has a disability that makes the quickly go to resources for the child seventeen or younger we see the resource limits for the household the resource limits hard they're not very very high they're not zero but a lot of parents exceed these resource levels so that's why it makes sense for them to kind of check back in as the child approaches eighteen so we essentially it help empower you to make that determination yes or maybe or no let's say yes then we get to the income and the distinction between resources and income resources or what you  they don't include all of your resources like the home you live in or the primary car that you use the income is the money you are from for example work on a weekly or monthly software and that's kind of the model of the question answer format based on your answers you you see what comes next that's kind of what we're doing here no one's ever applied that is and this is billing information that's what we're trying to do and if you believe that you are definitely or possibly eligible well then take you through a few screens on how to apply now you can get apply write directly on our on our website we're working towards that to make it even process easier so this is simply the parts of the application form for a society can do online there are some parts that you can't do online you actually do have to engage the social and this is the part you can't do online and this is the first point where we say our this is where you have to call so security you know so you could have basically spent fifteen or so minutes going through the guided by the  and to sum up guardianship it's not a whole another black and white you know opportunity there are different more limited alternatives to guard to full guardianship y say as the child is approaching eighteen so we're going to hop right into the guardianship guide and in this case after the welcome screen where we talk about the different and as i mentioned right up front we say this is where you should think about legal representation need to get it right now but there are here are your options from the free or pro bono to the limited to the full have you will and that will show you all the alternatives if your child this is moderate to high functioning and you think maybe a more limited alternative guardianship might be appropriate when the child reaches adulthood workshop that is way longer than they normally taught by hopefully that makes us meaningful watching the folks at home so thank you jeremy and we're going to transition into the sort of the workshop phase so very