About Us

Our History

Since 1987, families around New Jersey and beyond have made SPAN their first stop for support and resources.

SPAN was founded in 1987, in Westfield, NJ, by parents of children with special needs. We received non-profit status and our first Parent Training and Information Center (PTI) grant in 1989 as well as pilot funding from NJ Department of Health for Project CARE. That same year, we began training volunteer SPAN Resource Parents (SRPs) to support families.

In 1996, SPAN moved from Westfield to Newark, New Jersey’s largest school district, and started the NJ Statewide Parent to Parent to match parents experiencing significant stress or crises with other parents who have been trained to be “support parents.”

Since then, SPAN has started, piloted, and run multiple projects and programs for parents of children from birth to age 21, all the while teaching families and caregivers to be advocates for their children and leaders in their communities in collaboration with their school districts.

SPAN is proud to have been the first stop for families around New Jersey for 35 years. As we’ve grown, we’ve expanded our services and support across the US and US Territories. We’ve even had several international collaborations that have allowed us to bring the model resources and information we provide our parents and children here to other countries looking to improve their systems and become parent and community leaders in support of their children.