For Families

Barriers for Hispanic Families in the U.S.

Despite the fact that 27.18% of developmentally disabled children in the U.S. are Hispanic or Latino, very few service delivery and intervention approaches exist to meet the needs of Latinx children and their families (Thomas et al).

Of the service delivery and intervention approaches that do exist, almost all are difficult to access for Latinx families due to limited culturally-tailored resources, a lack of culturally-trained professionals, socio-economic status and legal status.

These barriers result in late diagnosis for children with neurological disorders, loss of early intervention opportunities and challenging discrepancies between home, medical and educational settings, delaying developmental learning (Casillas et al. 2017; Liptak et al. 2008; Magaña et al. 2013, 2016).

Solution

By addressing the four main pillars that serve as the root issue of a failing education system for Latinx children with developmental disabilities in the U.S., Manos Unidas program "Ayllu" improves access to evidence-based information, training and advocacy tools for Latinx families.

Ayllu’s cloud-based video curriculum is a culturally tailored product committed to educating, training and empowering families and community professionals, through evidence-based strategies, information and advocacy resources. Ayllu’s adjacent parent engagement and advocacy services support families through their learning experience and implementation within their children’s environment.

Ayllu has developed its first proprietary cloud-based video curriculum titled “Establishing a Successful Learning Environment” consisting of 6 training modules each presenting specific evidence-based strategies families can implement in their home environments. The course was piloted in 2021 with 12 Latinx families and 11 educators. The results proved the course to be engaging, comprehensible and applicable per social validity reports and quiz scores. Furthermore, the pilot demonstrated positive changes in adult behavior per recorded videos of skill implementation as well as strong correlations between adult learned behavior and children’s skill acquisition and overall engagement. This video series is currently available by subscription on Ayllu’s website when an individual creates an online profile with the company.

Partnership with Office of Education OMBUDS

MUI partnered with OMBUDS Education of Washington state to develop a video curriculum series “ Rights of Families and children within the Special Education System” to help families better navigate, advocate and actively participate with the education of their child.

This digital animation series is expected to be published by September, 2022.