Children with disabilities are a marginalized group and current literature indicates that their parents are less likely to participate in their education. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the agency and advocacy experiences of parents of elementary school children with disabilities in a school district in a central Florida…

The American School Counselor Association Closing-the-Gap Action Plan template is a tool created to help school counselors identify educational gaps and track interventions. We applied a transcendental, phenomenological qualitative research method to explore school counselors' use of the template to advocate for students. Our findings demonstrate…

A survey of 83 advocates for the retarded in three Florida programs was conducted to obtain descriptive information regarding people who volunteer to become advocates, to determine advocates' reasons for volunteering, and to examine advocates' perceptions of the effects of the advocacy program on the proteges and on themselves. Among findings were…

Florida elementary school principal Jack Currie believes in unorthodox loving behavior toward children, including cuddling, kissing, and telling them he cares. Unconcerned about litigation risks, Currie is an outspoken advocate for personalized child protection services and bearish about disrespectful behavior and bureaucratic red tape. He…

Notes that effective advocacy for children must build bridges between those who know most about and care most for children, those who are the powerful, and policymakers whose decisions affect the children's lives. Suggests that state-based, statewide child advocacy programs are most efficient and most effective. (ET)

Reported is a study of child abuse legislation and state programs relating to principles of reporting abuse in the eight southeastern states in Region IV (Georgia, Alabama, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi). Chapter 1 introduces the report and includes research objectives, format, and methods of data…

Describes an advocacy group of teachers and parents concerned with gifted children in rural northern Florida. Discusses an unusual collaboration between university and school district, in which three teacher education courses led to advocacy group formation, and each teacher-student became an expert in one problem area of gifted children. 15…

This paper describes the five-year Florida Foster Care and Adoption Plan which was developed to facilitate the provision of more effective services to children needing full time care outside the parental home. The paper is divided into five chapters plus an introduction and summary. The introduction outlines the problems facing the social service…

Although children of migrant workers tend to have low educational achievement, there is a surprising lack of data concerning educational challenges faced by handicapped migrant children. It is often a teacher's advocacy that results in a student's enrollment in special education services. This paper describes a Florida program for training special…