Have you ever received help from Washington Autism Alliance’s Family Navigation team?  Are you familiar with the work that they do?  WAA’s Family Navigation team is intended to help provide families with community services & support across multiple systems, connect you to self-advocacy resources and offer family-to-family support.  Our Family navigation team consists of Misha Trivedi as our Intake Coordinator and Keishawn “Bev” Cruising as our Family Navigator.  Misha and Bev currently are serving more than 100 Washington families per month.  

Some of the most frequent topics our Family Navigation team sees submitted are requests for:

• Navigation assistance of insurance and/or Medicaid
• Inquiries about support groups available for parents and children
• Inquiries about social groups for parents and children
• Assistance needed with Special Education issues 

We are working on some upcoming Lunch & Learns to review and discuss these topics, but in the meantime, if you are needing assistance, do you know how to reach out to our Family Navigation team?  Here are the steps to submitting for assistance:

1. If you are not already a Washington Autism Alliance member, click here to register for “individual membership”.  WAA membership is free and available to a parent/family member/friend of a person with a disability, along with a person with a disability (PWD).

Register Parent And PWD - Washington Autism Alliance

**Please note: You will want to make sure to click on the box “yes” under the question “Request follow up for a full intake or screening if you need legal assistance or case management or family navigation”.

If you are already a member of WAA, you can submit this intake form:

2.  Our Intake Coordinator, Misha, will be in touch with you to gather more information to either direct you to resources or schedule a follow-up call with our Family Navigator, Bev.  Normally our Intake Coordinator will reach out to you within 24-48 hours of your submission.

WAA recognizes the importance of having access to services that can help families as they try to navigate autism and other developmental disabilities.  Our Family Navigation team works hard to ensure our families receive help in a timely manner.