Lifeline for Special Education parents

Picture this - the school calls and says that your child needs to be evaluated for special education. The Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) sends an investigative team to your home to determine if you are a fit parent.
Your child is diagnosed with a “disorder,” and you don’t know what it means. They’re asking you to sign paper after paper, but you don’t really understand what the papers say. You feel like you’re caught in a tidal wave.
Thousands of parents, often single mothers, face this nightmare scenario. However, they do not have to deal with their mentally challenged children alone. They can “get a lifeline,” or answers and guidance at the Parent Resource Center of Queens (PRCQ) in Elmhurst.
Not to be confused with the Queens Parent Resource Center (for the developmentally disabled), the center is the product of the City’s Mental Health Association, which proposed the idea to the State Department of Mental Health and Hygiene. On March 1, the operation moved from the Queens Children’s Psychiatric Center in Bellerose to the Medical Building at 87-08 Justice Avenue in Elmhurst.
“We had no staff, no space - were operating out of a couple of borrowed rooms,” said supervisor Lorraine Jacobs, who started in October.
Before taking the helm, Jacobs had been a caseworker for the Saint Christopher-Ottilie Family of Services, a group home for single mothers in Saint Albans. For experience, Jacobs, who lost her husband to lung cancer in 1993, practically ran her own group home, raising 10 children - five of her own and five for her sister-in-law, who struggled with a serious substance abuse problem.
“The parents are usually overwhelmed when they get here,” Jacobs observes. “They’re at their wits end. Often their child hasn’t even been diagnosed. They don’t know where to go or what to do.”
The center acts both as advocate for the parents, explaining unfamiliar terms and informing them of their rights, and as a haven, providing “respite” sessions for frazzled parents, to watch a movie on TV in peace, or pamper themselves with a manicure.
Since starting up last October, PRCQ has helped about 40 parents “get control of their family back,” according to Jacobs. “Right now we have nine new intakes, and another five applicants. Sometimes they just need a referral to a therapist or an explanation and they move on. Some we work with on an ongoing basis.” she said.
Since Queens is so diverse, the small staff includes one African-American, one Hispanic and one Asian caseworker. Jacobs, who is Italian, Irish, German and “a bunch of other stuff,” said, “We can explain in language they understand that it’s okay to get therapy or give the child medication- and some of us speak from personal experience.”
“When parents come here they’re on an emotional roller-coaster. Our goal is to put hope back into their lives.” Jacobs says.