Who do you turn to when you need advice? A trusted friend? Someone who shares your values and understands what you are going through?
A Parent Champion is just that.
Parent Champions are parents/caregivers who have gone through the experience of raising children with developmental delays or disabilities. They act as peer mentors who help other parents/caregivers on a similar journey. They understand what it is like to face stigma from their communities and have gone through the process of overcoming barriers to access services for their children.
“A lot of the time [parents are] afraid to say ‘hey, my child has Autism,’ because in our culture it’s taboo.”
-Parent Champion
Critically, they share culture and language with the parents/caregivers they support. One parent shared, “It feels good to work with someone who has the same experience as you. Sometimes people from America don’t really get where you are coming from. Working with someone with the same background is helpful because I can be open with them — it feels like home.”
Improved wellbeing for parents/caregivers and their children
The Parent Champions Pilot, which launched in 2023, has helped hundreds of families connect with these peer mentors. The Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS) Performance Measurement and Evaluation Unit’s recent evaluation of the pilot showed that it improved wellbeing for parents/caregivers and their families in the following ways:
- Increased social connections and belonging: Parent Champions helped parents/caregivers feel less alone and also found community with one another.
- Increased knowledge of parenting and child development helped dispel misconceptions and enabled families to better connect with their children.
- Reduced shame and stigma, and increased pride about raising a child with developmental differences. Some parents/caregivers shared they were still on their journey of acceptance.
- Increased confidence advocating for their children in their communities and in institutional settings like schools or doctors’ offices.
- Increased equitable access to developmental screenings and timely connections to services like speech, physical, and occupational therapies that help children thrive as they grow.
A step toward equity to help children thrive
In addition to supporting families, the Parent Champions Pilot is helping disrupt inequities in access to developmental screenings and support services.
Developmental screenings help families identify whether children are meeting milestones with skills like talking, walking, and socializing. Screenings are critical for identifying potential delays or challenges and connecting families to support services that help children thrive as they grow. Access to screening, however, is not equitably distributed across King County with variations in screening rates by race/ethnicity, geography, income, and caregiver education level.
“[The] support and everything, the screening – I think that just makes a difference in the lives of our toddlers.”
-Parent/caregiver
By serving in communities that have the least access to screening, Parent Champions are helping ensure all children have access to the supports they deserve.
To learn more about the evaluation of the pilot, read the executive summary or full report.
