Family Support & Resource Center

About Us

Our Mission:
We are here so that Dane County children and youth with disabilities will be able to live at home with their families as valued and participating members of the community.

We offer these programs:

Respite Care is short-term care of a child or an adult with special needs provided by a responsible adult. It provides parents or other family members time to be free for a while from their day-to-day responsibilities. Respite also offers the person with a disability the opportunity to develop new relationships.
Respite staff help families find, train, coordinate, and support qualified respite providers. Families may choose to have respite care provided in their home, in the provider's home or in the community. Care can be arranged on an occasional or a regular basis, for periods ranging from several hours up to two weeks. Families can use their own providers or those recruited by program staff. The program also subsidizes the cost of respite care, up to 140 hours or 14 days each year.

Family Support offers a variety of services including, but not limited to: 1) financial assistance to families to purchase goods and services needed for their child, 2) information, service coordination and advocacy to assist families in identifying and acquiring needed services, 3) emotional support and 4) assistance in building and strengthening natural support networks among extended families, schools, and communities. The purpose of the program is to alleviate some of the stress faced by families who have children with significant disabilities, thus enhancing their ability to care for their children at home and in the community. Services are family-centered and flexible; families choose the assistance they need.

Community Inclusion facilitates connections between children with disabilities and their families and the larger Dane County community. One of the most serious problems facing children with disabilities is the lack of opportunity to form typical friendships. Our Community Inclusion staff work in collaboration with families and community groups -- schools, religious organizations, neighborhood centers -- to establish connections between children and to enable them to participate together in family and community activities. Inclusion Facilitators also assist families to gather together their friends and allies to broaden the network of support for the child and to plan for the future.

We are guided by these principles:
1. Parents are generally in the best position to know their own needs, to find solutions, and to choose the kinds of services that will help them to care for their child with a disability.
2. Families have great capacity to care for children who have disabilities when they receive support from friends, neighbors, human service professionals, and other community members.
3. A sense of trust and confidence in continuity of support is important to establish and preserve with each family.
4. Communities are enriched when all people, including those with disabilities, are valued and included as full members.