The first Parent to Parent program in the U.S. was founded by Fran Porter, a parent, who collaborated with Shirley Dean, a social worker in 1971 and petitioned the Greater Omaha Arc in Omaha, Nebraska to establish Pilot Parents of Nebraska, a program in which parents of children with disabilities could share information and emotional support with other parents through a one-to-one match.

In 1974 Patty McGill Smith joined Pilot Parents and with her leadership received a regional developmental disability grant to help establish Parent to Parent programs in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri. Within two years there were local programs in these four states and parents across the U.S. were calling Pilot Parents of Nebraska for information on setting up a Parent to Parent program in their own community.

For 18 years the Parent to Parent movement made steady progress, with the growth of many statewide, regional and disability specific peer support programs. In an effort to learn more about this movement and to study its impact, Ann and Rud Turnbull, Co-Directors of the Beach Center on Families and Disability hired Betsy Santelli in 1992 to conduct a national survey of Parent to Parent program administrators to learn about their
structures, services, funding, and answers to many other questions. This initial study led to the development of ongoing support for Parent to Parent efforts. Between 1992 and 2002 Betsy Santelli served as a vital link for Parent to Parent program directors across the country, offering guidance and materials based on survey findings and, connecting more experienced programs with emerging ones.

Since the beginning, Parent to Parent programs attempted to have a conference every other year. The conference served as a place to discover new, best practices and re-energize around common missions. The conferences started in Nebraska in the early years and progressed to where on statewide program would sponsor the conference every other year, trying to hold the conference throughout the United States. Washington State served as host in 1986, Kansas in 1988, Florida in 1990, Arizona in 1992, North Carolina in 1994, New Mexico in 1996, Georgia in 1998, Nevada in 2000 and Pennsylvania in 2002. As these conferences grew the added dimension of Statewide Director’s Meetings were paired with the conferences. The need for Directors to meet annually was responded to by the Beach Center who generously assigned the coordinating of these meetings to Betsy.

Ms. Santelli was the touch-point of the Parent to Parent movement for many years. Her untimely death in 2002 came on the heal of funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to strengthen and coordinate national efforts to ensure access to community based support for families with children who have special needs throughout the country. Our work to date has been inspired by Betsy’s commitment to the Parent to Parent movement.