In April 2017, the peer facilitators and alumni of the Now and Next program held their inaugural conference, entitled ‘By Families, For Families’, in Sydney, Australia. At this conference, something groundbreaking transpired, something both profoundly significant and genuinely radical: parents of young children with disability and developmental delay actively accepted responsibility for asserting their “natural authority” (Kendrick, 1995) in their partnerships with their child’s professionals and therapists.
Together, the parents contributed to and endorsed a position statement that articulated how the best partnerships and relationships develop between parents and professionals. Also – more importantly – the statement affirms our own responsibilities as parents to “lean into” leadership in these partnerships. The statement specifies the duty that we, as parents, have, to act upon our natural authority and to nurture that authority in other parents, so that we take more active control of envisioning and driving our children’s goals, dreams and futures.
