Emma Fialka-Feldman & Sophia Johansson

Mass Families Organizing for Change (Mass Families or MFOFC) is a grassroots, statewide network of people with disabilities and their families, and has a 30-year history of responding to the needs of families. We partner closely with four different human services providers who contract with the Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services (DDS) to provide leadership training and to support the skill acquisition of families whose loved ones are eligible for services. This case study describes our work in partnership with educator Emma Fialka-Feldman to create MatchUS, a community-driven effort to connect educators, related service providers and families to support students with disabilities during the pandemic.

When schools began closing in March, members of our network experienced a “de-materializing” of the existing service system, leaving families with few supports. But during this time we also saw and continue to see an odd combination of flexibility, resources, and unprecedented opportunities to influence and partner with other stakeholders. In this spirit, we began holding “Community Calls” to better understand what our community was experiencing and think together about solutions. Our intention was to support vulnerable families in sharing their “on the ground,” real-world experiences so as to improve the time to response of public officials and the school system. Equally important, families could help solve and share what is working to help amplify solutions.

“Community Calls” for Understanding and Action

We were strategic in our invitations to our Community Calls, while also making the forum available to everyone who was interested in participating. We had to quickly build meaning and credibility. This meant ensuring the presence of personalities, voices, and representatives of different efforts and expertise. The conversations on these Community Calls all had a sense of urgency and focused on potential solutions. We heard from family leaders, folks at our state’s Parent Training & Info Center (in Massachusetts, this is the Federation for Children with Special Needs), our protection and advocacy agency (in Massachusetts, this is the Disability Law Center), representatives from our state’s Intellectual/Developmental Disabilities Agencies, the professional organization for special education advocates in our state, public interest and legal services law firms, family advocacy organizations (such as our state’s chapter of Family Voices), and family networks.

In these calls, we heard parents talk about not receiving any communication, work, or assignments from their child’s teachers. Parents described a need for speech, occupational, and physical therapy services but little guidance from state or district leaders. Families, many of whom have children with significant needs, felt alone without any of the supports their children had previously received every day.

“While systems can be places of promise, now more than ever we must turn to one another as neighbors and community members. We must work outside of the systems of schools, services, and institutions to create the relationships we all need to support each other in this crisis. This is the work of MatchUS. This is the work of creating intentional supports for families who have children with disabilities, by connecting them with educators, therapists, and service providers who are showing their creativity, willingness, and deep commitment to children by volunteering their time.”

A Way Forward: An Educator Partners With MFOFC

Emma writes: As an educator with an adult brother with an intellectual disability, and as someone deeply concerned about how students with disabilities would be served during this time, I participated eagerly in the first of the Community Calls. I had previously known of the work of Mass Families and had used some of their resources to support my own students with disabilities. During the call, I heard families share their deep concerns and frustration with teachers and school districts. As an educator, I felt both a strong disappointment in the system’s failure and a deep belief that many educators do want to be useful. A day or so later, Sophia and I chatted to follow up about the concerns I’d heard, as I was one of a few educators on the call. We brainstormed possible next steps to immediately support families in this crisis, knowing that schools, districts, and the state were going to take time to create a rollout of special education services.

I created a survey and pulled on my resources. These include a wonderful bilingual student teacher who acts as our English-Spanish translator, allowing us to broaden our outreach. Both surveys—the one for educators and the one for families—were designed to quickly gather information to make matches between educators and families who need supports.

Inspired by the work of Mutual Aid Networks, we imagined that this matching process would pair a family with a child who has a specific disability and need, with an educator/therapist/social worker, etc., who has a resource/skill to share within that need. We matched by age, experience (early childhood, middle grades, transition 12+, etc.), licensure/skill experience (general educator, special educator, social worker, physical therapist, etc.), content skills (behavior, math, reading, social skills, communication, etc.), and took into account any notes from the family.

I reached out to other educators to help take the data from both of the surveys to create the matches. Leveraging their Google Sheets skills, they sorted and filtered the surveys to narrow down matches. They took what information we had from the surveys about educator skill sets and matched it with descriptions and needs families had shared. Not all matches are perfect, and a handful didn’t flourish because of unresponsiveness either from the educator or the family.

Reaching Out to Networks

We shared the survey with our networks, including the local teachers union, Parent Training & Info Center (the Federation for Children with Special Needs), our protection and advocacy agency (the Disability Law Center), representatives from our state’s intellectual/developmental disabilities agencies, the professional organization for special education advocates in our state, public interest and legal services law firms, family advocacy organizations (such as our state’s chapter of Family Voices), and family networks. We prioritized resource hubs, including agencies that work with families, beyond special needs communities.

Responses immediately started to come in! It was a treat to see familiar names and to see so many others (families and educators) who were new to us. We saw people complete the surveys from places as far as Hawaii, and we had families who requested matches to educators who spoke Haitian Creole, Arabic, and Spanish. As demands grew for specific needs (e.g., speech therapists, transition specialists, or a particular language need), we leveraged our networks—and within hours a new educator would fill out the form. It was truly a community-driven response to the crisis! As of April, we have matched over 160 families. Requests continue to come in daily, and we’re ready and willing to make matches outside of Massachusetts.

A Community Response With Impact

Anecdotal evidence and data collected from follow-up surveys illustrate how the effort has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for both educators and families. Educators consistently said they felt useful or very useful. Families consistently said that the matches were helpful or very helpful. It’s important to note that matches played out in different ways. Some matches had only one conversation over the phone or through a video call, while other matches have led to daily reading tutoring, opportunities to read a book series together, and/or connections to other organizations. Families felt so grateful to talk with an educator who “didn’t have an agenda.” And educators felt so honored to be able to give back to their community. Some have even called these encounters “lifesaving.”