May 2, 2008

Dear Friend of TLG:

A mother who's a wheelchair user may lose her baby forever because she's had difficulty finding affordable and accessible housing.

A baby is placed with a father who has been violent with the mother with an intellectual disability.

A 3 year old is removed from a nurturing grandmother with arthritis who has raised him since birth. In foster care his grief at separation results in serious mental health and medical problems.

A young boy is mislabeled as having "oppositional disorder" because no one has identified and intervened regarding his severe sensory processing problems.

A family and preschooler with autism receive TLG services; the therapist identifies beginning signs of such difficulties in an 8-month sibling and begins intervention to minimize the problems.

In many of these situations, TLG has been the only appropriate resource for the family. Its services have been acknowledged as extremely effective with families experiencing many stresses besides disability.

For instance, the national rate of out-of-home placement for children of parents with developmental disabilities is 40-60%, when TLG works with such families-often with multiple stresses-the rate drops to 4-7%.

In 2007, TLG provided model services to over 1,600 mostly low-income infants, children, parents and grandparents in the Bay Area. The experience from services is channeled into consultations, training and public policy change efforts. In 2007 this resulted in 5,000 consultations and training to 6,000 parents and professionals in the U.S. We've now trained people from all U.S. states, 44 countries, and at the United Nations!

In custody disputes alone, last year we dealt with 900 contacts from parents with disabilities in crises and reporting discriminatory practice in family court or child protective systems.

Because so many of us on staff at TLG have first-hand personal and family experience with disabilities, we are often able to gain a family's trust so we can then offer our professional expertise--ranging from infant mental health to adaptive babycare equipment to custody evaluations to early intervention for toddlers with signs of autism.

There are so many more families in critical need of TLG's unique services. We hope you will join our efforts to provide essential services to families in the Bay Area as well as improve resources for families across the country.

Please send your tax-deductible contribution to:

Through the Looking Glass
Attn: Development Office
2198 Sixth Street, Suite 100
Berkeley, CA 94710

Sincerely,

Megan Kirshbaum, Ph.D.
Founder & Executive Director

P.S. Please visit our website at www.lookingglass.org to see the wide range of services and resources TLG offers.