About Balcony People for HOPE

It can be hard to know the possibilities for your child when you’ve been told that she has a disability or that he is facing a special healthcare need or other life crisis.  HOPE Center Network for Families is a network of support that seeks to help families discover and pursue the possibilities that exist for their child. 

Balcony People for HOPE encourages and supports families during difficult times in their parenting journey.  Receiving a disability diagnosis for a child or dealing with special healthcare needs is a stressful occurrence and is the beginning of an uncertain journey.  It’s hard to know where to turn and what’s ahead.  No one knows the journey of parenting a child with special needs better than someone who’s been there.  Balcony People for HOPE connects you with another parent and meets you wherever you are in your journey in order to provide hope and help to find a path forward.

Who Are Balcony People?

Another parent who’s been where you are and wants to share what they’ve been through to help you navigate your way.  A balcony person has a big heart, a spirit of love, compassion, and kindness.  They know that parenting a child with a disability is no easy task.  But they also know that possibilities exist for all children.   Every parent needs someone in their lives who encourages and inspires them to keep moving forward; someone who can spark a spirit of hope to face the challenges ahead. 

What We Provide

· A listening ear and a voice of encouragement

· Face to face support

· A hand to hold to help with accessing resources

· Strategies for you to be able to advocate for and meet the needs of your child

· Connection to others whose parenting experience is similar to yours

· Help and HOPE

ONE FAMILY'S JOURNEY 

Our daughter was just one week old when we received the diagnosis that she had a disability. We were told everything she couldn’t do or wouldn’t do.  We were told not to expect much.  We were left in a fog—alone and confused about what to do.  We were left with no hope about our daughter’s future.  We discovered that my daughter had possibilities.  She is not like everything we were told.  She is so much more!!!

As a parent, I discovered I needed to have hope—to see the unique possibilities that my daughter’s future holds.  My perspective is that having hope is rising above the limits of a disability diagnosis.  Since no one can ever really know what a particular child is capable of doing, hope is what fuels the engine needed to maximize a child’s potential.  It took me three years before I discovered that I could hope again.  Our ability to see possibilities for our daughter is our unique role with the teams that function on my daughter’s behalf.  HOPE is the foundation for all we do.  My family and I work very hard to preserve our hope.  So many of the tough moments in our journey are  when something comes at us to rob us of our hope.

All families have the right to have hopes for their child—hopes that no one should judge as being unrealistic or unattainable.

HOPE Center Network for Families was founded to help families to do whatever it takes to find the possibilities that exist for their child and set positive expectations to move forward to achieve those possibilities.

-Samtra Devard

Parent and Founder

If you would like to use your journey to make a difference in the lives of other families, become a Balcony Person!

Join us.

Please Contact Us today.