“I just want to tell you my son is now in a frum school,” a parent told Mrs. Deborah Rockoff, director of REACH, several days before Rosh Hashanah.

That’s the most rewarding feedback Mrs. Rockoff could ask for.

“They tried eleven schools,” she says. “Their son was going to have to go to public school. We got him into the last possible yeshivah option.”

Mrs. Rockoff, who has a degree in social work from Fordham University, has worked for Yachad, the OU’s division for individuals with disabilities, in various capacities for 25 years. REACH is Yachad’s special needs resource and referral center, and this is her favorite job so far.

“Parents of children with special needs were really, really struggling with finding services,” she remembers of years past. During Covid, her team decided they had to do something about it, and in September 2021, after months of planning, Yachad opened REACH.

Earlier that year, in May of 2021, the Agudah had started its own special needs referral center, Yahalom, with a groundbreaking concept: a referral service for children with special needs. Several months earlier, a few Lakewood mothers had approached Rabbi Avi Schnall, then-director of Agudah’s New Jersey office, looking for help finding resources for their children with special needs. Rabbi Schnall couldn’t believe there wasn’t an organization servicing them, and things moved quickly.

Mrs. Laniado, Yahalom’s founding director, met with many mothers, social workers, and professionals to get the new organization off the ground.

“We wanted to build this to meet the needs of the families,” she says. “There was nothing like it. Two months in, we got calls from New York, from Chicago, from Detroit, Baltimore — people just kept calling.”

Today, Yahalom also has branches in New York, Illinois, Maryland, and Florida, with three other states in the works.

The expansion to New York was initiated by the mother of a child with special needs who’d heard about Yahalom in New Jersey and pushed for them to open a branch in New York.

Building on the previous work of Mrs. Leah Steinberg, who had supported New York’s special needs community for decades through Agudah’s Project Learn, YahalomNY opened in October of 2021.

A third organization, Ezreinu, was founded a year later by Rabbi Yochonon Wolpin, himself a parent of two children with special needs. In 2015, he’d moved back to New York from Eretz Yisrael to access better services for his children. But he quickly realized that the search could be all-consuming.

“You finally get someone good,” he says, “and then the child’s at a different level, a different age.” Suddenly, the therapist who worked so well in the past isn’t relevant anymore. “So you start searching again… and you can be so lost. How’s one person supposed to know so much?”

Slowly, Rabbi Wolpin learned to navigate the labyrinth of available services, and he dreamed of creating a parent-based program where people could share information and benefit from each other’s experiences. In October 2022, Rabbi Wolpin opened Ezreinu, a special needs resources call center.

Mapped Out

“We’re not here to offer services,” says Miss Tova Wacholder, director of the YahalomNY branch. “We are here to be an objective referral center.”

Rabbi Wolpin and Mrs. Rockoff echo that statement. All three organizations — Ezreinu, REACH, and Yahalom — pride themselves on maintaining databases of resources with the sole aim of helping people. While each organization looks different, they share the same goal: to guide parents of special needs children to appropriate services.

“If you open up the Mishpacha magazine,” says Miss Wacholder, “maybe every second page has an ad for another special needs program. But if you have a child with special needs, you might call every single ad, and not one of them is appropriate for your child.”

At each new Yahalom office, the first few months are spent doing intensive research.

“Speaking with every provider, meeting every school, meeting dozens of parents,” says Miss Wacholder. “Because parents really know more than anyone what works and what’s happened.”

Before REACH launched, Mrs. Rockoff and her team spent a year building a database of nearly 1,000 services.

“We started knocking on doors,” she said. “We reached out to schools, camps, government service agencies, social recreational programs, therapists….”

They were surprised to find how difficult it could be.

“It’s really trying to cut through the red tape,” she says. “It was not an easy process. I kind of realized what a lot of these families go through when trying to find the right person within these organizations.”

“Besides for the right phone number,” says Rabbi Wolpin, “parents need to know if a provider will accept their insurance, and what gender and age the provider will accept. Verifying all this information is extremely time-consuming.”

And the research never ends — because resources change quickly. Mrs. Laniado says she’s constantly reaching out to parents to hear what they’re dealing with and what’s working for them.

The compiled information and guidance can make all the difference for a struggling parent, who often may not even know about local resources.

Yahalom recently helped a mother whose young son was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. His lack of structure after school had plunged the whole family into chaos, and she was completely overwhelmed.

“I just can’t get it together,” she told Mrs. Laniado.

It turned out that her son was eligible for an ABA therapist, who now comes every afternoon.

Rabbi Wolpin recently spoke to someone from Monroe whose child had been using a G-tube, a gastrostomy tube that provides nutrition directly to the stomach, for a few years.

“There’s no gemach for that where I live,” the man told him; it was hard to find supplies in a pinch.

“Give me a minute,” Rabbi Wolpin said. He pulled out his phone and gave the man three numbers for G-tube supplies gemachim in Monroe.

“It’s not that I know everything,” says Rabbi Wolpin. “It’s just that I constantly gather information from wherever I can find it.”

He and his four staff members have joined many WhatsApp, email, and texting groups. They learn about resources from parents, professionals, program leaders, and askanim.

“Every day, we’re learning at least 25 pieces of information,” he shares.

By now, Ezreinu has around 4,000 numbers in their database, organized by tab. Even a partial list is dizzying: ENTs, neurologists, insurance advocates, shadchanim, transportation, medical supplies gemachim (“Did you know there are over 100 medical supplies gemachim in New York and New Jersey alone?” he asks), hospitals (188); genetic counselors; schools (150); camps (100); support groups (over 100); and therapists — from OTs, PTs, and SLPs to aqua therapists, music therapists, craniosacral therapists, and animal therapists.

“There’s so much out there that people don’t know,” he says. “People are having a hard time. Which is the best ABA agency, which is the best day-hab for adults, or Sunday program for young kids? And then we have other things that only a parent of a special needs child could understand — like a dentist who understands kids with special needs, or what’s involved in giving a haircut to someone with special needs. It’s a nightmare.”

“Parents are drowning,” says Mrs. Laniado. “Sometimes they just need someone else to pick up the phone, call the schools, and help them manage.”

Call Forwarding

What’s it like to be on the line when a parent calls for help?

“Many parents don’t even know what they’re calling to ask,” Miss Wacholder says. “Other times, it’s more specific, like, ‘Do you know a geneticist who can help us?’ ”

When a parent calls Yahalom, their office manager takes down some basic information: name, number, email, home address (which can make a difference in eligibility for services), and their child’s date of birth and diagnosis (if they have one and feel comfortable sharing it). Next, their family support specialist walks the parents through the steps they may need to take. Though some requests are simple, like a referral for a guardianship lawyer, most cases are not resolved in one call. “Many times, there’s a tremendous amount of follow-up,” says Miss Wacholder.

“Our mission is to hold the parents’ hands through the process,” says Mrs. Laniado. “Sometimes, Yahalom is the only one that knows a child’s diagnosis.”

For example, in New York, an OPWDD (Office for People With Developmental Disabilities) application can take nine to 12 months.

“At every single step,” says Miss Wacholder, “a parent can get stuck. So we try to help them through that process by offering to be copied on their emails. Then we can respond to the agency and say, ‘What’s going on with this? Why hasn’t there been a response?’ ”

At REACH, some people remain anonymous when they call, just providing an email address for follow-up. After a phone call, their team will send the parent a list of referrals, including descriptions, addresses, and phone numbers. “We’ll prioritize it for them,” says Mrs. Rockoff. “First you can call this person. If you can’t reach this person, try this. If you can’t reach this person, try this. If not, feel free to call back.”

Their database is organized by relevant variables: location, gender, diagnosis, and type of service (schools, camps, government services, social recreational programs, and miscellaneous). The staff uses an internal rating system, aided by parent feedback. “Let’s say a practitioner doesn’t call somebody back, or an office is filthy, and a few people are saying, ‘This was just disgraceful’ or they had a terrible experience, then we’re not going to refer to that person anymore,” says Mrs. Rockoff. “Of course, it could be that it was a bad match for a specific client; we take into consideration a number of things.”

REACH also sends out six-month check-ins to see how the client is doing, and if there’s anything else they can do to help. “So far, baruch Hashem, we have about a 99 percent referral rate, which is really great,” says Mrs. Rockoff. She’s proud that all of REACH’s staff are professionals in the field of special needs.

“If we think something’s too big for us, we’ll work with other organizations,” says Mrs. Rockoff. “Refuah, for example, which specializes in medical referrals, and Relief, which specializes in emotional referrals.”

Rabbi Wolpin says the live phone format is crucial to his organization’s mission. For example, a parent might not say they need a support group, but “the staff hear it in their voice, that they need help. And they’ll tell them, ‘By the way, there’s a text group for parents with Down syndrome kids, or there’s an email group.’

“They can hear, sometimes, if a person’s going through a hard time financially,” he says. If his staff recommends an OT who only takes private pay, and a father responds, ‘I don’t have a penny to my name,’ they’ll connect him with resources for financial assistance.

“There’s a lot of chizuk that goes on from our staff members when a call comes in,” says Rabbi Wolpin. “Someone’s listening to you. Someone cares. I get a lot of feedback about my staff. They’re very nice and caring, baruch Hashem, so people feel comfortable to talk.”

The issues parents can deal with can range from the mundane to the heavy.

For example, Ezreinu’s database has a special tab for parental advice. “Kids bite their sleeves, they rip their clothing,” says Rabbi Wolpin. “Or they bang their heads. What can you do? How can you help them stop?” He’s compiled dozens of practical tips.

But sometimes, the conversation is much more painful. “We try to keep track of all the organizations related to birth and death,” he says. “There are people who lose children…. Some children are unhealthy, and sometimes they can live for just two or three years. Afterward, Hashem yeracheim, parents need support.”

“The calls really vary in intensity,” says Mrs. Rockoff. “From quick fix to really heavy emotionally.”

In this field, it’s not just the intensity that varies. The parents calling REACH, Ezreinu, and Yahalom come from an incredibly diverse range of backgrounds and locations — and every child is different.

Miss Wacholder and Mrs. Laniado stress that there is a huge range of disabilities in the world of special needs. “Autism, for example, often comes with a behavioral component,” says Miss Wacholder, “while Down syndrome more typically comes along with a medical component. Then there are the children with complex medical needs, not to mention rare genes, of which there are thousands….”

“If you’ve met one child with autism, you’ve met one child with autism,” she says wryly. “Every child is so unique.”

“Just today,” says Rabbi Wolpin, “I had somebody call us up — they have a child who’s blind, and they wanted to teach her how to play violin. We were actually able to find her somebody.”

“We have parents who call us from every part of society,” says Miss Wacholder. “From chassidish Yiddish-speaking parents, to Russian speaking, to Persian speaking, to frum, to not frum… and we have staff members who speak different languages.”

At Ezreinu, two of Rabbi Wolpin’s four staff members speak Yiddish. “Our focus is on helping everybody, Yiddish- and English-speaking alike,” he says. While he gets many requests from areas like Williamsburg, Monroe, Boro Park, and Monsey, he also has a lot of information relating to the Five Towns and Lakewood, and calls from those locations have been increasing.

Because REACH is hosted by Yachad, which serves over 20 communities in ten regions (Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Israel, Los Angeles, New England, New Jersey, New York, South Florida, and Toronto), they field calls from all over. Last year, between parents, case coordinators, and service providers, they had about 3,000 phone calls.

Mrs. Rockoff says REACH’s requests come in ebbs and flows. “There are busy seasons,” she says. “Now (mid-January), people are starting to think about camp, and ironically, school for next year. Sometimes schools recommend that kids start seeing psychologists in the middle of the year, or teachers identify issues and they want to nip them in the bud, so they want students to see certain therapists, and we get calls about that.”

“At every stage of the journey, we have parents calling,” says Miss Wacholder. “Before birth — once they know that the child they’re going to be giving birth to has disabilities, sometimes they want to know what’s the best hospital; sometimes, unfortunately, their child has a medical need that needs placement at birth. It’s so diverse, it’s from birth till 120. Probably the oldest call we got was about someone in their sixties.”

Last year alone, Yahalom offices across the United States received more than 8,000 calls, and at this point, each Yahalom office services about 100 new families per month.

“I shouldn’t say ‘new’ completely,” says Miss Wacholder. “Some are repeat families. Because the special needs field is dynamic — every child’s needs are constantly changing, they’re unique, fluid, and constantly changing.”

When Yahalom started, they didn’t think they would run public events. “But then we saw that as much as there was a need for concrete resources, there was a need for emotional support,” says Mrs. Laniado.

They began to organize mothers’ events, then fathers’ — though established organizations warned Mrs. Laniado not to invite men, telling her nobody would show up. She decided to try anyway.

“Now we have over 100 men at every event.”

So far, Yahalom has hosted events in Lakewood, the Five Towns, Brooklyn, Monsey, Chicago, Baltimore, Miami Beach, and Staten Island, with more in the works.

Klal Yisrael’s Children

Parents of children with special needs often don’t take enough time for themselves; they’re on duty 24/7, and the job can be incredibly draining.

“After a certain time, when the kids are sleeping, you have to relax and take care of yourself,” Rabbi Wolpin reminds parents. “Go out and enjoy Hashem’s beautiful world — be a human being.”

Miss Wacholder remembers an Agudah Convention years ago when the Novominsker Rebbe spoke about special needs children.

“He said, ‘These children are ours — you can’t say it’s not our child, it’s not my family.’ It’s all of our responsibility. And yes, we all have what to give, and everybody’s needed to help out the community.”

Rabbi Wolpin is determined to make sure parents can get the resources they need — whether that’s respite or just crucial information. “If a banana peel falls down on the floor,” he says, “instead of having everybody slip on it, let’s just pick it up and throw it out. Until now, everybody was suffering from the same issue of not knowing what was out there for their children. By gathering information and giving it over to parents, we can help solve this issue.”

“It’s about working together as a community on behalf of this population that desperately needs us,” says Mrs. Rockoff. “The community should open their doors.”

“We’re never done,” says Mrs. Laniado. “I’ve seen since I’ve started this journey just how important it is — and the more we can continue to work for these families, the easier we make their lives.”

“I think that the most important thing to bring out is that we’re working together as a community for Klal Yisrael’s children,” says Miss Wacholder. “Baruch Hashem, we have seen a tremendous turnaround in the community, of acceptance, of awareness… and we have plenty more to do. We don’t sleep just yet, till Mashiaich comes. We have Hashem’s children to help, and it’s a zechus.”

Helping Our Boys

Sometimes, the answers aren’t black-and-white.

Summer camps are an example: There aren’t many options for, say, a child with severe autism who needs one-on-one support. “If a boy can’t get into either of the two camps,” says Miss Wacholder, “you’re really stuck.”

In general, the lack of respite options for older boys across the frum community — whether in New York, Lakewood, or beyond — is a significant community challenge, says Mrs. Laniado.

“It’s a real issue,” says Miss Wacholder. “Special education is a female-dominated field… and a frum woman may not be able to work with a 15-year-old boy who needs physical support and bathroom help. At the same time, they need someone to help them.”

Rabbi Wolpin agrees that this is the biggest issue he sees: “For boys, it’s very hard.” He says there’s a desperate need for more men to join Ezreinu’s “Holding Hands” volunteer group, which helps with respite requests.

Rabbi Wolpin sees a lot of potential for recruiting help from bochurim who don’t fit into the traditional yeshivah system. For example, at a recent shabbaton for special-needs children, he was extremely impressed by the male volunteers. “I saw a lot of great bochurim,” he says. “A lot of these bochurim just can’t focus or concentrate. They just want an outlet, and to feel good about themselves.”

Branching Out

Yahalom’s initial aim was to be “a central referral center for every family walking the special needs journey.” But their mission has expanded to include two more goals: legislative change, and providing services where they can’t find existing ones.

“If there’s nowhere to refer, how helpful is a referral agency?” asks Miss Wacholder. “So ultimately, we do take on a little bit more, when we see that there’s a need in the community.”

When Yahalom opened, some mothers told Mrs. Laniado there was a real need for support groups for mothers and siblings. In collaboration with Lakewood’s LCSC, she started a bunch of groups — some in person, others by phone — to cater to the families’ needs.

They also offer group training sessions; a recent one focused on legal guardianship. “If hundreds of parents are calling about the same thing,” says Miss Wacholder, “then all the parents can learn about it at once — that way we can help more people faster.” For the same reason, they produce educational booklets; for example, before last summer, all the Yahalom offices collaborated to publish a guide to sending special needs children to sleepaway camp.

At one group training, a mother learned that her child had been eligible for a monthly financial aid program since age five — but she’d never known about it, and her child was already 17. “What in the world?” she gasped to Mrs. Laniado. “It’s good I came out tonight!”

The third part of Yahalom’s mission, legislative change, is deeply connected to their roots as part of the Agudah. “We communicate with legislators and directors of government programs to inform them of what we’re seeing from seeing the community of parents,” says Miss Wacholder. If Yahalom sees a recurring issue across the entire state, they can let the government know it’s a problem.

Yahalom’s multiple locations are crucial in this part of their mission. “There’s no way a person could take care of another state’s needs without being there,” she says. “There are so many cultural nuances, so many relationships that need to be developed.”

“What we’re famous for,” says Rabbi Wolpin, “is our Holding Hands group.”

Holding Hands is a group which matches parents with volunteers who can take in special-needs children for either short- or long-term care. The group covers New York and New Jersey, and it’s growing rapidly, with over 500 people on a WhatsApp group and 60 on a texting group.

Only admins can post to the group, and new requests are posted daily. “We don’t accept any requests from agencies,” says Rabbi Wolpin. “We need to hear from the parents themselves.”

If volunteers are in the right neighborhood and can work with the age, gender, and disability of the child, they can reach out to Ezreinu privately. While some responders are volunteers who do this as a chesed, many parents offer billing hours or private pay for their requests. “There are people that are on the group because they want to make money, which is fine,” says Rabbi Wolpin. “They’re good people, they do this for parnassah.”

“Today, we had two requests,” he says. “The first one was in Boro Park, a one-year-old baby with an NG tube, they need somebody to take in the kid for the third week of January, and they can pay in cash… then we had another request for an active eight-year-old, they needed someone to take him out from five to seven, they had hours from HCS and Hamaspik to bill.”

Both of today’s requests have already been covered. “I actually had three people who reached out about the first one,” says Rabbi Wolpin. The second request was posted at 12:39 p.m.; by 1:08, someone had volunteered.

It’s not always this easy, though. Before a volunteer is approved, Ezreinu asks for at least two references. “We need to make sure this person is responsible and capable of doing this,” says Rabbi Wolpin. He also always tells parents to meet the volunteer in advance. “We are careful, we try our best, but we need siyata d’Shmaya, 100 percent,” he says. “We’re not an agency, we don’t ultimately take achrayus, but we do our part to act responsibly.”

As a parent of special-needs children, Rabbi Wolpin understands the need for help. “You can’t go to a chasunah, because you can’t find a babysitter that would be willing to watch your special-needs child,” he says. “Before giving birth, mothers worry how they’ll find someone to care for their child while they’re in the hospital. Or, chas v’shalom, if someone is sitting shivah.” And sometimes, he stresses, parents just need a break for Shabbos.

Ezreinu is constantly looking for more Holding Hands volunteers. To help the group grow, they hold a monthly raffle of $150 for people who recruited five more volunteers. “It adds motivation,” Rabbi Wolpin says. “Especially for girls in high school, it’s exciting for them. So people want to take requests — they come to me by the end of the month and say, ‘There was nothing posted in my neighborhood!’ ”

“So tell people in your neighborhood that there’s help for them!” he responds. “People have so much to offer, and families can really use help.”

Resources

REACH:

www.yachad.org/reach

1-877-REACH-52 (732-2452)

reach@ou.org

Ezreinu:

ezreinuservices.org

1-718-750-1010

info@ezreinuservices.org

To join the Holding Hands group, text your name and number to 929-450-4433.

Yahalom:

www.yahalomunited.org

1-212-797-9000

Yahalom@agudah.org

Online Databases:

While special needs call centers are a recent innovation, there are also several online resource databases for people with special needs in the frum community.

Beineinu

Beineinu, founded in 2008 by Mrs. Golda Turner and Mrs. Deena Weinberg, is a volunteer-run organization providing information and support for individuals, families and service providers dealing with special needs.

The Beineinu.org website, which includes over 4,600 pages of inspiration and information, covers resources across the USA and Israel, with more content being constantly added. It’s received hundreds of thousands of visits, and over 600 people are signed up for their regularly scheduled emails.

“We created our website’s huge database so people can search for whatever they need while protecting their privacy, though we are always available by phone or email to help,” says Mrs. Turner. “We do not do actual referrals… but we do try to connect people to those who can help them best.”

The Jewish Abilities Alliance

The Jewish Abilities Alliance, founded in 2012, is an online directory of services for people with disabilities. The directory has branches in six communities across Florida, New Jersey, Georgia, and Maryland, and is hosted by local Jewish Federations.

Mrs. Tzippy Rosen, community liaison for the South Palm Beach JAA, assists several hundred families a year with information and referrals. As the outreach coordinator for the South Palm Beach JFS, she also works with local shuls, schools, and programs to support people with special needs in the Jewish community. But she explains that the JAA is open to everyone. “Anyone can call me, and anyone can access the Jewish Abilities Alliance website,” she says.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 999)