HISTORY of UVSG/SNSC

Upper Valley Support Group (SNSC): The Early Years

By Geraldine North, first Director

The formation of the Upper Valley Support Group for parents of children with special needs became a very personal odyssey for my family. Our son was eight years old when our daughter was born and diagnosed in 1975 with severe hip dysplasia.

We spent many years traveling to and from the Children's Hospital in Boston while she underwent multiple surgeries on her hips. We also received the news in Boston that our daughter, at age three, was autistic.

Because she received medical services outside our community we were cut off from service providers in the Upper Valley. This sense of isolation became the catalyst for finding other parents who might support us and pass on information about local services.

Confidentiality laws prevented professionals passing out other parents' names so we decided to ask school and medical professionals to release our names to anyone who asked to contact other parents with similar needs. It was late 1979 and our phone began ringing. Over the next twelve months interest in a parent network grew.

Federal Law, PL94-142, had recently been passed [after years of laborious efforts and campaigning by parents of special children throughout the country.] This law was slowly being implemented into New Hampshire and Vermont schools, and teachers and special educators were working hard to implement it. [provide an adequate education to the handicapped children in their classrooms.]

We were fortunate to live in a College town where educators were enlightened and medical personnel worked at a teaching hospital where our efforts were both supported and respected. Nevertheless, there was concern and resistance from professionals in all phases of development until UVSG was fully embraced. The Area Agency XII was already established to provide services and training for the developmentally challenged in the Upper Valley and Bruce Pacht, Director, helped in our early efforts.

From the start UVSG, as a grassroots organization of parents, sought to meet with, and work with, special educators, medical personnel and other service professionals.

In 1981 I met with four other parents, Trudy Hemmelgarn, Connie Bardorf, Bob Scobie and Vicki Winters around our kitchen table on Low Road in Hanover. Over coffee we struggled with how we might identify ourselves in the community, and what we could provide for other parents.

The initial goals were to provide support and information, and training in educational advocacy. However, the group quickly sought to move into a larger arena of services. The full title of the group was established because UVSG always wanted to serve parents of both visibly and invisibly handicapped children.

We began plans to raise funds and incorporate as a non-profit. We wanted an office, a logo, paid part-time staff, a central library, a regularly published newsletter, an educational handbook, and a respite care program. I wrote those early newsletters on an ancient typewriter, cutting and pasting, and whiting out, and they became a means for disseminating information, for gaining a mailing list for later fundraising, and for spreading the word in the community. Connie Bardorf spent many long hours with my family preparing those letters for mailing.

In the summer of 1981, UVSG became a non-profit organization with a single-roomed office provided by Dr. George Little, Dartmouth Medical School, Department of Maternal and Child Health, in the Butler Building on the grounds of Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital.

We received seed monies of $100 from the Mitman Society of Hanover and $200 from the Hanover Rotary Club that covered the costs of sending out a quarterly newsletter with a little left over for travel expenses.

With the support of Thom Shear, I wrote my first grant to the NH Charitable Funds and Affiliate Trusts. This grant provided a start-up grant of $2000 to cover our very nominal rent in the Butler Building, an answering service, a part-time secretary, training from the Parent Information Center in Concord in educational advocacy, and impetus to advance the planning of a Respite Care Program. I moved into the role of "secretary".

Letters were written by the Special Education Directors in Hartford, Hanover, and Lebanon school districts supporting UVSG's efforts and outlining their programs for special students. Advocacy for parents who were experiencing difficulties with their child's Individual Educational Plan was a vital part of UVSG's services.

Bob Scobie was instrumental in compiling a questionnaire for parents and professionals to start a dialogue. He facilitated a discussion between special educators and parents around their voiced concerns. It was an historic gathering, parents and professionals from throughout the Upper Valley united around a singular cause. The dialogue between the small groups who filled all the rooms at our house on Low Road was both enlightening and instructive for everyone.

UVSG parent members were also actively engaged in getting their message out. Board members spoke on radio programs, at luncheons, to parent groups beyond the Upper Valley, to service clubs, and to groups of professionals. It was at one of these meetings that a seminal event took place.

Trudy Hemmelgarn was asked to speak at the Children's Early Education Program (HCEEP) Rural Network at Keene State College and was heard describing the goals of the fledgling UVSG by Susan Avery, Director, NH Developmental Disabilities Council, Concord. Susan was looking to fund a "model" parent organization in the state.

By December 1982 we had applied for, and received, funding from the NH Developmental Disabilities Council with professional grant-writing help from Dena Romera. This grant provided for two part-time staff: a Program Director, Geraldine North, "who will be responsible for maintaining and expanding UVSG to meet the needs of parents with special children in the Upper Valley". And a part-time Respite Care Coordinator, Vicki Winters, "who will be responsible for implementing a program of respite care".

Both part-time positions actually required a full-time commitment and UVSG moved from the Butler Building into office space provided by Alice Peck Day Hospital at 127 Mascoma Street, Lebanon. We found ourselves with two offices, a small kitchen, and a conference room. Heady stuff, indeed.

By December 1982 the Respite Care Program was established. Under the professional direction of Vicki Winters, potential caregivers had been interviewed and those selected from the pool of candidates underwent four training sessions. She interviewed all the families and took great care to "match" caregiver and special child.

Meetings were held with both educational and medical professionals for input, and to alert them to the program and its benefits. We connected with medical students at the Medical School and students from the Big Brother/Big Sister program at Dartmouth College. Due to its success, and its obvious need, the program outgrew our abilities to maintain it and eventually the Respite Program was moved into the Area Agency XII (UDS).

Finally, the June 1983 newsletter showed off its new logo, created by a gentle, special man at Dartmouth Printing. It consisted of two hands holding a child, the triangle signifying the Upper Valley and its mountains. We were still typing on an ancient typewriter, cutting and pasting as necessary.

The handbook created by Susan DenHartog and me titled, "You Are Not Alone", was printed and quickly dispersed. Further funds were given by the NH Charitable Funds and Affiliates Trust to reprint "You Are Not Alone" and to publish a second handbook "When You Reach Out to Others…You Are Not Alone". This second handbook was useful when we were asked to speak to parents who hoped to start their own self-sustaining group.

Kids on the Block arrived in late 1984. Anah Pytte of Etna, who saw the puppets perform on a Sunday TV program generously donated $1000 to buy our first puppets. There were six of them: Renaldo in his wheelchair and headgear, out-there Jennifer with her learning disabilities, quirky Ellen Jane who was mentally retarded, and Melody and Brenda who were non-disabled and who kept the dialogue running.

David Strohmier, long involved with Opera North, coordinated the project and trained the puppeteers. The original "Kids" troupe from Washington, D.C. were brought to the Hopkins Center and performed their show "The No More Special Me" to an enthusiastic audience of parents and children. We were set to begin visiting schools by the end of the year.

In the summer of 1984, a northwest regional conference was held in Portland, Maine, with presentations about innovative programs that had successfully crossed the barriers between parents and professionals. Connie Bardorf, Lois Roland (Learning Specialist), and I attended the conference. I was asked to speak about UVSG and how we had managed to bring parent and professionals together in collaborative ways.

In August, 1984, the first National Conference on Parent-Professional Partnerships was held in Washington, D.C.

UVSG was contacted and I was invited to speak on "Parent Networking in a Rural Area". It was a great honor to represent all the parents I cared about and the culmination of all the work we had done in New Hampshire. In October, I represented UVSG again at a Medical Symposium sponsored by the Vermont Association for Learning Disabilities and spoke about our respite program and the ways in which we had brought medical professionals and parents together in the service of our children.

UVSG has been a place where families and professionals could work together, and has allowed parents to develop close friendships that continue today. We have watched, together, our children grow and live through their challenges. It is with great pride, and awe, that we continue to share in this parent organization, recently renamed the Special Needs Support Center under its vibrant green and blue umbrella.

1985-1999 A Golden Age for Family Support

(by Bev Parry, Executive Director during that time)

I got my first lesson in faith soon after Geraldine retired. I had come to UVSG as a board member, having had a child who was born 3 months prematurely.

My husband and I had made a documentary film on that experience and I had written some articles about parenting a special needs child. Geraldine thought I should get involved. She soon asked me to run the respite training & Big Brother/Big Sister program (15 hrs/wk), and then announced to the world that she was retiring.

Then Board president, Pat Martin (luminary in her own right) asked me to step into the director's seat, which I said I would only do for one year.

A bleak scenario it was.

UVSG had come to the end of its 3-year seed funding from the NH Council on Developmental Disabilities, Geraldine had retired, and we were pretty sure we would have to roll up our packs and fold.

And what a shame: we had all these great things going: phone calls from parents hit the magic 200 number, our monthly dinner lecture series drew as many professionals as parents, respite care was on a firm footing and volunteer respite was developing nicely.

The first life preserver.

It came in the form of a new grant to take the Kids on the Bock puppets "on the road". We had been asked to perform for the NH State legislature (we didn't know we were sealing a deal for approval of funds at the time) and our mission, should we chose to accept it, was to blanket the state of New Hampshire with performances and the message of inclusion.

At the right place and time.

This little parent group was at the right place at the right time. New Hampshire wanted to close its' state institution, but had no infrastructure in the community set up for folks to live and work.

Besides creating the area agency system, the wise men at the state level wanted to see what kinds of services the parents would design if left to their own devices.

They wanted parents to show them the way to build community capacity.

That August, I got a call from Dick LePore at the Dept of Mental Health (a guru in his own right) and he asked me what would we do if we had $5,000 to help families of preemies being discharged from the hospital on ventilators. Can you imagine? They called us!

That began a new partnership with the Bureau of Special Medical Services, and before the year was up we designed a grant to bring "family support" into six specialty clinics at Hitchcock hospital.

A whole new group of parent voices were now being added to the growing pot of advocacy and respect for the soundness of parent thinking on the design of services that REALLY helped!

We subsequently received funding to publish a book on parenting premies, called Going Home, copies of which are still being requested.

Cathy Ross joined our board as President, and opened up our eyes to families dealing with Cystic Fibrosis, heart conditions, and Spina Bifida.

Dr. Ardis Olson at Hitchcock worked with us to coordinate a new training program for pediatric residents and 4th year medical students, based on the experience of giving respite to young children with disabilities.

Ten years later we were offering regular training sessions to medical students at DHMC on the "Principals of Family Centered Care".

That September, Trix Officer and I took a 65 hr training program at the Parent Information Center in Special Education law to respond to an avalanche of parent phone calls asking for help in the school system. With Trix as the angel of diplomacy, good will and sound thinking, we made a reputation for UVSG as a safe haven for troubled school teams.

In our first four years, we grew from 15 families a year to 5 families per year.

Breathless, we met with Dr Ray Chin who encouraged us to create a volunteer parent network for school advocacy.

Our mission was always to create parent-professional partnerships and pretty soon we were getting as many calls from the teachers and principals as the parents.

UVSG's board president Pat Martin offered sound advice that if you have volunteers, you must provide almost as many hours in support and training as you receive in volunteer help. For me, that became a guiding principle in all that we did.

In those early years, we ran a summer camp, forging a wonderful partnership with volunteers from Dartmouth's Delta Gamma Sorority, and strengthened the Big Brother/Big Sister program with Dartmouth students from the Tucker Foundation.

In the fall of 1989, Mary Ellen Sullivan joined the team at UVSG as the receptionist/ secretary.

It soon became very apparent what a gold mine we had.

I knew I needed to create something for her to run in order to keep her amazing brain engaged and staying at UVSG and so two years later a new program was born networking parents together on a statewide basis to talk and give support to one another.

We were still cranking out a newsletter on Jim Martin's off time as a Xerox repair man (you can just imagine how the printing was done) but the numbers were beginning to engulf poor Jim.

Word was out, and parents from all over the state were calling in, asking us to come help them set up little UVSGs.

Mary Ellen had advanced computer skills and she willingly took over the job of our newsletter. We were still serving as consultant to the NH DD Council and we created statewide Special Families United (SFU). But sadly, it ran aground after a leadership change.

What came out of their efforts was an even better idea: to create family support within each of the 12 state regions, driven by parent voices. UVSG and others from SFU started commuting to Concord to help draft legislation and line up speakers to talk to the legislative task force.

What a thrilling time that was!

Added to this mix was a new Super Nova at the newly established Institute on Disability at UNH called Jan Nesbitt.

Jan came armed with grant dollars for research and community organizing, and in 1989 between Don Shumway, director of mental health, the director at the DD Council, and New Hampshire parents, we passed the first Family support legislation in the country.

Parents got to tell the agency what would help, what was ineffective, what was worth spending money on and what could be done with volunteers. Special dollars were earmarked for parents to "design" what they wanted. An attitude of "Whatever it takes" was born.

This truly was the Golden Age of parent support.

A Statewide Family Support Conference was held bringing families all over the state of New Hampshire together, coordinated by a lively parent, Ceil Conner at Mental Health, It wasn't too long before these New Hampshire Parents were traveling all over the country to be keynote speakers at other parent conferences.

Though there were sometimes tugs of war between the professionals and the parents for this pot of money, it was still raw enough in the early years and the parent voice was sacrosanct.

Upper Valley Support Group helped with the initial training for the special parent councils and housed the first Family Support Coordinator Torre Lee Fisher-Sass at our agency. At this point we were outgrowing our quarters at APD hospital and we worked out a wonderful arrangement with the APD CEO to take over a family residence on their campus.

It is interesting to look back and see how grant dollars flowed in certain streams that solidified and defined what we were already doing.

The Parent Information Center seemed to have cornered the market for education dollars for information and school advocacy, but what we were doing was different. We were offering "emotional support".

Because of my own experience parenting my daughter, I was eager to expand UVSG's umbrella to include families of children with emotional challenges.

In 1988, we met with state officials from Mental Health and parents from National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and developed the states' only training north of Concord for parents to learn about diagnosis and educational opportunities for their kids.

Because there was still so much stigma experienced by this group, we decided to seek additional funding for the ED puppet in the Kids on the Block troupe. We sought and received funding from yet another pot, Protective Services, to introduce the dicey issue of abuse and neglect.

These sensitive puppet shows averaged one disclosure per performance which was enough to convince United Way to underwrite their presence in schools for the next 10 years.

One of the best things that came out of that era was the development of the Nathan Hall library, set up by one of UVSG's luminary parent volunteers, Barbara Hall, in memory of her son.

In the meantime, a new group in Vermont had started by a parent named Nancy Divinere -called Parent to Parent of Vermont. I thought we could do this in NH and so I called up my friend Jane Hybsch, at Special Medical Services and asked her if she wanted to partner writing a federal grant to establish one for New Hampshire parents. She said that she had tried for 2 years unsuccessfully to receive funding. We replied that maybe the missing ingredient was the parent voice.

The Institute got wind of our conversation and asked if we wanted help from their grant writer Sue Covert, and, oh by the way, could we also build them in for a research part to study the parent to parent intervention?

This ease of communication, respect for each other's perspective, and partnership is extremely rare at the state level. UVSG was blessed and privileged to enjoy this and that is why I call it the Glory years of family Support.

*****

In 1990, we received a 3-year federal grant to establish a NH Parent to Parent network, to link parents together who had children with similar disabilities or who had similar issues for support and information.

Our target group was the much underserved medical families, but it was agreed that families of kids with all kinds of disabilities would be welcomed.

We wanted to be "ONE STOP SHOPPING".

Mary Ellen Sullivan became the Statewide Coordinator housed at UVSG, and Martha Jean Madison was hired to serve as the parent facilitator within the Concord medical office.

Together with Bonnie Dunham from PIC we developed a training manual to train "veteran" parents interested in becoming support parents. As an after thought, we took some funds from our salaries and seeded four regions to establish their own parent to parent programs within the area agency system.

We wanted to strengthen and unite family support across the funding barriers that existed between developmental, medical and mental health.

We grew from a staff of 4 to a staff of 12 overnight, who were dispersed throughout the state. When federal funding expired in 1993, it was this piece that saved the future of P to P because the regional family support councils picked up the funding for the statewide training. Special Medical Services picked up the hotline.

Gerry North had provided us with the model from 1984, when she gave an unwieldy respite program to an agency, but kept the training pieces.

We earned a reputation for designing creative programs, nurturing their growth, and then spinning them off to agencies, who were receptive to continuing them.

We now concentrated less on bricks and mortar projects and returned to being "a model" that others could copy.

We encouraged the independent growth of many new statewide support groups by lending them our 501.C.3 non-profit status, by administering their funds, and helping them with an Internet hub for chatting. Nancy Archibald, our wizard bookkeeper, made all this possible while making the juggling act seem effortless.

*****

By 1993 we were one of 8 statewide parent to parent programs and we were being invited to speak at national conferences.

Mary Ellen was being called upon daily to be a consultant to different states wishing to set up their own programs.

At one conference in Ashville, North Carolina, while sipping a cup of early morning coffee in the lobby, I was introduced to Anne & Rod Turnbull of the Univ. of Kansas. The more we talked the more we realized we had similar interests in family research and in that lobby we hatched out a field study to test parent to parent in five different states.

Dr George Singer was a nationally known researcher in the field of disability and he had just been hired to run Dartmouth College's Hood Center for Family Support. How effortlessly the pieces came together. With Dartmouth, Kansas, Vermont, South Carolina, North Carolina, and New Hampshire, we hammered out research questions and rating scales to test the power of parent to parent support as an intervention that helps cognitive adaption to disability.

After three years, our study appeared in the "Journal of Pediatrics and the Journal of Early Childhood".

A book was also published called Parent to Parent which was an anthology of the history and development of parent support programs in the United States, authored by the late Betsy Santelli from Univ of Kansas, with many pieces contributed by our own Mary Ellen Sullivan.

As the decade of the 90's came to a close, UVSG parents were being challenged for caring for their now teenage and young adult children as well as caring for their aging parents.

One of the last programs developed during this era was the "Happenings" program, coordinated initially by David Royale, with the gentle guidance of Sylvia Dow (and three other parents and a two-year project called Caring for Aging Parents, which was brilliantly coordinated by Nancy Archibald.

We replicated all the things we had done at UVSG and took them into the elder care service arena.

This included respite, a pot of flex dollars for emergencies, a "wraparound" forum for interagency brainstorming to take care of family situations that "fell between the cracks" and of course a support group, ably coordinated by Gretchen Maynard.

In a twist of irony, we once again received the writing expertise of Dena Romero, social worker for the town of Hanover, who had written our original grant in 1982. And she, together with Nancy Archibald wrote a wonderful book on how to access services for aging parents. It was considered the bible for many years.

What a journey we have traveled. Our kids have grown up before our very eyes. They have pushed us to advocate and design many services that have cracked open the heart and cracked open the community to receive them. The world is a more comfortable place for all of us to be in.

Congratulations to SNSC on 30 years!

What was supposed to be a two month stint in 1999 as Interim Director of Upper Valley Support Group turned into several years of service as Executive Director of the organization.

After being Bev Parry's sidekick for10 years, I knew the organization, its programs, its needs and many of its parent members.

I certainly had the best mentor possible in Bev. But I also knew that I didn't have her "vision." Maybe I'd be fine for two months or so.

When I left years later, in 2006, my "vision" hadn't grown, but the organization had mushroomed! Opportunities for new programs and newly expressed needs of parents brought changes and challenges that were both exciting and scary. Exciting because of the additional supports for parents and their children, scary because of the need for ongoing funding.

We jumped right in and pressed on, with a can-do attitude that, on reflection, I think was gutsy and admirable.

I'm going to highlight the changes and challenges as chronologically as my memory will allow (I threw away my years of appointment books!). I'll start with the people who made such a difference.

• Board of Directors - A wonderful mix of parents (Pat Pollard, Carol Foster, Karen Currier, to name a few) and professionals (Toni LaMonica, Doug Williamson, Steve Atkins, Nancee Tracy, Phyllis McKenna, to name a few more). These were thoughtful, supportive Board members who had the best interests of the organization in mind.
• Nancy Tantillo - An organized, artistic administrative assistant with common sense and a parent's perspective.
• Philip Eller - A caring man, ready to help in any situation, "the Professor" and the voice at the Parent to Parent phone.
• Ann Justice and her band of KOB musketeers - Ready to go to the edges of New Hampshire and beyond to model positive attitudes and behaviors toward people with differences.

That's who we were.

Here are some of the things we were doing.

• Happenings - Named by Rick Clavelle of the Hartford Regional Resource Center, the group was formed to offer more social activities to older teens and young adults. Agnes Guay, Pia Pearce and Karen Currier were the parent driving forces as Happenings came into being, and it was a huge success with participants from the start. The highlight for me was the Happenings group bowling with some Bosnian students visiting Dartmouth. The Happenings gang taught the Bosnians to bowl!
• Partners in Health - This program served parents whose children have chronic health conditions. It was funded in part by the Hood Center but depended mainly on serving parents whose children were on Medicaid for the majority of its income. Katie Merrihew Ouelette was the coordinator for several years, helping parents acquire anything from small but essential items to larger things such as ramps and accessible vans.
• Respite Care - This program came about through the Early Childhood Mental Health Network. ECMHN members Cindy Swart, Susan Lloyd, Pat Martin, Kathy Marshall and others determined the need for respite, designed a program to serve all families, requested the UVSG Board to house the program, wrote and submitted a grant, which was partially funded. Leona Ryder was the first coordinator, refining the details and reaching out to the community to advertise the availability of respite to any family.
• Educational Advocacy - Always a great need, always without cost to parents, advocacy is more than likely to continue being requested.
• ADHD Support Group - Philip Eller took charge of this group, which continued for several years.

Non-program highlights:

• Benefits - UVSG began offering a very modest but helpful medical reimbursement benefit in the early 2000's. We couldn't really afford to do it, but we couldn't afford not to do it. I am proud of the staff for saying what would be helpful to them and of the Board for being in total support of the benefit.
• 480 Digital - The 480 Digital company sent an interviewer and a cameraman to video record some UVSG programs in action. The finished product was added to the UVSG web site that had been created by Philip Eller and a parent volunteer.

I think my brain is worn out and so must be your reader eyes.

I'll close by saying I LOVE the organization, its parents and their wonderful children who have taught me so much and who have so much to offer our community.

It was with a great amount of respect and sense of deep responsibility that I took over the reins of then UVSG from Maryellen in March 2006. Soon, Pam Blair was hired as the part time Connections and Respite Coordinator.

In September, Lori Shipulski was hired as our contracted bookkeeper to replace (really an impossibility) Nancy Archibald who had held that position for 17 years! To add to these changes and challenges, the Board in that fall voted, after several years of extensive discussion and receiving input from families and professionals, made "the leap" to change our name from Upper Valley Support Group to Special Needs Support Center.

The main rationale for this major change was that we as an organization had grown beyond the initial mission of "support group" into one of multi-services and programs - and a name to better reflect this expanded mission was needed to convey this reality.

The public relations and education effort to spread the word of our new name provided the stimulus and opportunity to expand our public image and awareness.

As an agency that mostly operates "under the radar" of public awareness (until a family needs us!), we were sensitive to our need and responsibility to expand our public image to professionals and families so that "when we are needed by a family of a child with a special need" we will receive that first call from the parent or relative.

Even though Executive Directors changed in 2006, the mission and programs of UVSG/ SNSC continued on - Family Support Services, Kids on the Block, Parent to Parent of NH, Community Partners, Respite Child Care Program, as well as the Partners in Health program.

My vision of an expanded awareness, focus, and involvement of SNSC throughout the whole Upper Valley, including the Vermont side of the river, was supported by the hard-working, dedicated, and creative Board of Directors that had been assembled under the leadership of Toni LaMonica.

As a result, expanded contacts with professionals and agencies in Vermont, and most recently increased numbers of grants submitted to Vermont funding sources have expanded our support as well as number of parents and family members from that side of the river.

During my short tenure significant changes have been made in the developmental disabilities care system in the Uppper Valley. United Developmental Disabilities (UDS), that had been one of our major collaborators as well as funding streams, was mandated to merge with the similar DD area agency in Claremont - resulting in new agency, PathWays of the River Valley, that now serves lower Grafton County and Sullivan County.

While our strong collaboration has continued with PathWays, our financial support from that source has been cut more than in half. SNSC has responded by increased efforts to secure funding from other types of sources. These have included increased numbers of grant applications to foundations, and especially in an expanded Annual Giving Campaign (AGC) to individuals and businesses in the Upper Valley.

Under the inspired and very hard working leadership of first Toni LaMonica and now Pete Bleyler (as Board Chair), in combination with the huge efforts of the Board of Directors and the AGC Committee, the AGC grew from about $10,000 three years ago to almost $52,000 last year.

The AGC has become a significant source for financial sustenance for SNSC.

This is especially important in these financial times when cutbacks have been seen in state and federal agencies as well as reduced funds available from charitable foundations. As financial planners tell investors, is diversify - and SNSC is definitely following this advice as to funding sources. This diversification will continue to be a cornerstone for our financial stability.

Upon my assuming the role of Executive Director, the Board accepted the need for increased responsibilities in certain areas in order to assist in the work of SNSC.

An expanded and revitalized Committee structure accompanied the constitutional changes made with the change of names.

The Finance/Audit Committee filled in the extensive gap in my limited business and accounting skills.

The Special Events Committee stepped up to the plate with planning and running of the Wine Tasting Event (now in its third year at the Officer's lovely home in Hanover), the Dinner at Simon Pearce Restaurant, hosting the SNSC annual meetings, etc.

The Programs Committee had primary responsibilities for the Comprehensive Programs Evaluation that took place in 2008-09 - and looked at the efficacy of all our programs and identified areas for future program/service development. The Grants Committee has given support and direction to our increased grant applications to foundations.

The Annual Giving Campaign Committee, now under the Development Committee, spearheaded the amazingly successful increase in donations from individuals and businesses in the Upper Valley. Without this dedicated work of the Board and Committee members the productiveness and success of the operation of SNSC would not be possible.

All these "behind the scenes" efforts make possible the front line work of our great staff.

These include Pam Blair, our Community Partners and Respite Coordinator, and Nancy Tantillo, our part time Administrative Assistant since 2000, and in June 2008 Leah Abrahamsen, as the part time STAR Coordinator. For several years SNSC had acted as the fiscal agent for the STAR program and when it looked like it might discontinue its work with teenagers who have chronic health conditions the Board decided, after careful study and consideration to "take it under the SNSC umbrella."

The STAR program proved to be a natural fit for SNSC and Leah has done a wonderful job carrying on the STAR traditions.

With the move to full time status in 2007 Pam took on more coordination role for our Community Partners programs, including leadership of the Happenings program, a social/recreational opportunity for older teens and young adults, that was expanded to a monthly activity. Also, Pam has been trained as an Educational Advocate and has taken on more of this valuable work with parents.

As if all these tasks were not enough, Pam also is our resident computer guru and carries out responsibilities in this area including the Annual Giving Campaign. Pam has truly become an indispensable SNSC staff member.

In the last few years SNSC has begun to expand its services that directly serve the grown-up children of the parents who have been part of us for the past 25 to 30 years. This has meant expansion of our Community Partners programs, like Happenings and Sibshops.

In the spring of 2008 we responded to a need identified by one of our parents, Sylvia Dow, for continued learning and self-growth experiences for young people who had aged out of the school system. With her energy and leadership and SNSC's support work, two new and valuable programs were begun: the ART LAB and Education Classes.

The ART LAB is a weekly art activity offered in collaboration with AVA Gallery and its art educator, Murray Ngoima.

This fall the ART LAB has grown to 38 participants and two different weekly sessions. Displays of these artists' creative work have been held at the PathWays offices in Lebanon and the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, to rave reviews and response from the public.

The other activity suggested and led by Sylvia is the Education Classes, 8 weekly sessions held at Lebanon College, on a variety of topics that meet the students desire and need for continuing education.

And SNSC has collaborated now with Northern Stage Theater in drama classes for some of our young people as well as the River Valley Club with dance classes. Mentioned elsewhere in this newsletter is information about SNSC's latest program that meets a need identified by parents and our professional colleagues - the ASPIRE weekly play group for children ages 4-7 who have autism.

During 2009 SNSC celebrated its 30th anniversary of serving parents and families of children with all types of special needs. All year we have had events celebrating this important milestone. We have been reminded of the immense vision and dedication of the parents in our early years and the hard working and dedicated staff (especially the Executive Directors) that have carried out the programs that were conceived and suggested by parents.

We look to the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead as SNSC "carries on the legacy - now and into the future."