October 24, 2003

OU to Extend Telephone Hotline for Parents and Teachers of Special Needs Children

Due to the success of the educational hotline established in September by the Orthodox Union’s National Jewish Council for Disabilities (NJCD) addressing the questions and concerns of parents and teachers of special needs children, NJCD will be extending the telephone hotline’s 24-hour services for the indefinite future.

NJCD sponsors the Yachad program for children who have learning, physical, and developmental disabilities; its Our Way program serves the needs of the deaf and hearing impaired.

“The hotline provided an important resource to families and professionals during the first few weeks of school,” remarked Miriam Horowitz, Assistant Director of NJCD/Yachad/Our Way. “Calls were coming in from many different localities with a great variety of issues. Our experience with this pilot project proved that the hotline provided a much needed service.”

The hotline, which until now has been staffed by rotating specialists from NJCD/Yachad/Our Way, will now accept voice mail messages in order for staff to direct individual calls to professionals within NJCD/Yachad/Our Way who specialize in the area in question.

The hotline was originally announced in August and is designed to answer the questions of families and teachers of children with learning and developmental disabilities in addition to physically challenged and hearing impaired children. Calls have come from parents and teachers in both the public school system and yeshivot.

Questions posed to the hotline have been in a variety of areas including:

• Parents seeking yeshivot with vocational services for children with speech impediments;
• Teachers asking for more information about the various workshops offered by NJCD/Yachad/Our Way;
• How parents can find advocates to help their children obtain services from the public school system;
• Parents needing help in getting public school districts to provide services for their children in yeshivot.

This year’s pilot hotline was established to help with issues at the beginning of the school year. “We are planning to provide staffing of the hotline again in May instead of using the voice mail system,” explained Mrs. Horowitz. “We know that at that time parents will be planning for the new school year.”

The hotline number is 1-800-493-8990. The hotline can also be reached via email at edhotline@ou.org.

The Orthodox Union, now in its second century of service to the Jewish community of North America and beyond, is a world leader in community and synagogue services, adult education, youth work through NCSY, political action through the IPA, and advocacy for persons with disabilities through Yachad and Our Way. Its kosher supervision label, the , is the world’s most recognized kosher symbol and can be found on over 275,000 products manufactured in 68 countries around the globe.

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