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Including Family Voices to Improve Service Delivery to Multilingual & Underserved Young Children with ASD

A MPS ASD Family Voices & MNLEND Partnership

December 18, 2017

MPS-MNLEND Team Top L to R: Elle Chenoweth (MNLEND Fellow - MPS); Cynthia Hillyer (Dir. of Early Childhood Ed - MPS); Mariana Walther (MNLEND Fellow - MPS) Bottom row L to R: (Suad Salad, Assoc. Educator - MPS); Nancy Gonzalez (MNLEND Fellow)
MPS-MNLEND Team Top L to R: Elle Chenoweth (MNLEND Fellow - MPS); Cynthia Hillyer (Dir. of Early Childhood Ed - MPS); Mariana Walther (MNLEND Fellow - MPS) Bottom row L to R: (Suad Salad, Assoc. Educator - MPS); Nancy Gonzalez (MNLEND Fellow)

The ASD Family Voices Project is an initiative of Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) that focuses to improve service delivery to multilingual and underserved young children (3-5 years) with ASD and their families. In the 2016-2017 school year, MPS and MNLEND launched a collaborative partnership to create an evaluation project to analyze the effectiveness of MPS services and processes for multilingual children and families who receive services in the Early Education, Special Education and Multilingual Departments. The project design included a literature review, an analysis of MPS student data, development and implementation of a family survey, analysis of survey results and recommendations for an ASD Family Voices Project 2.0.  

The project design was created by a multicultural team of LEND Fellows and MPS staff. The survey cohort included MPS multilingual families, whose children received early childhood screening, special education evaluation and an IEP under the education eligibility of ASD. The team reviewed each child's student information identifying 20 Somali and 20 Latinx students who met the criteria for the cohort. From the chosen participants, 8 Somali-speaking and 10 Spanish-speaking families completed surveys.

The 3-part survey included demographic information of caregiver and child, MPS communication and information received, and services received in health, education, county and family supports.  MNLEND Fellows administered the survey by phone, documenting survey responses using Google forms, with direct oversight from MPS staff. Analysis of the survey responses included review of aggregate data as well as individual responses. The chart below summarizes the survey responses.


Almost all families reported that their culture and family norms were respected and that MPS services supported their child. Areas for improvement included communication of education eligibility, identification and documentation of access and links to health and county services, and connection to advocacy and support groups. The 2017-2018 MNLEND Fellows will address the topic of timely access to services in health and human services and family supports. They will create map links to services and use person- and family-centered design theory while working with families to address gaps in services. The work will be aligned with other MPS projects underway.  The survey cohort will be expanded to include all underrepresented and underserved ethnically diverse groups with the aim of completing 50 family surveys in total.

2017-2018 Recommendations

●       MPS ASD Family Voices Project

●       Dual Diagnosis Project - Educational and Medical

●       Establish MPS Parent to Parent Network: Cross departmental initiative

●       Partner with PACER and The Arc - Develop informal and formal parent support strategies

●       Fund ECSE Summer Evaluation

●       Develop Professional Development: Best practices in service delivery to multilingual families

●       Build buy in of senior leaders at MNLEND and MPS

Legislation and Policy Review:

Literature Review: