FAQ

"The Chinese Parents Association for the Disabled was established in 1990. It is a non-profit organization set up by a group of Chinese parents who have children with developmental disabilities. The purpose of our organization is to provide support and assistance for physically and mentally disabled individuals and their families. Our goal is to help each individual achieve his or her full potential, so that they can have a meaningful and productive life. Some of our services include parent support groups, referrals to appropriate community resources, and other services such as locating interpreter and translation assistance. All the parent members are volunteers, who donate their time and money to serve parents in need. To assist our members, we circulate a newsletter; invite professional speakers to our meetings, which are held every two months... We also provide activies (outdoor and indoor) twice a year for our disabled children to enhance their social skills and integrate with peers their own age... We are serving over 200 families in the Southern California Area. we are looking for support from communities to hlep us to continue our much needed services to our members."

Yes, we are.

Our meetings occur every two months. Twice a year, but hopefully more, we also have social events for our children. In the past, we have participated in Happy Heart Days, hosted by Disneyland. Through a donated performance from the California Institute of Chinese Performing Arts, we were able to provide sixty-one families with two admissions tickets, lunch, and a wonderful time at Disneyland.

The locations of our meeting change, but usually, we are located at the Community Health Education Center (CHEC) in San Gabriel, California.

If your child has been diagnosed with a mental or physical disability by a qualified physician, your child is qualified. But if you are not sure, we would be more than happy to talk to you about you and your child's situation.

Most of the parents that take part in CPAD are Chinese, but being Chinese is not a manditory qualification for entrance. For many of the parents, English is a second language, so we try to provide interpretor/translation services, to support each other in this way. We would be honored to have you in our presense, regardless of your ethnicity. You will always be welcome.

Simply inform us that you want to have a newsletter sent to you, and we will make an effort to send you a copy of our next newsletter. Please remember to tell us your address, if you have not done so already.

When you become a member of the CPAD, you and your child will recieve our newsletters, participate in fun events, take part in enriching and informative lectures given by experienced speakers, and a community of parents who have been through similar issues.

In order to become a member, we need to know some information about you and your child. This includes the child's name, the parents' names, the disability, address, phone number, etc. For now, we will have to recieve your information over the phone, an e-mail or fax, and through the mail. Later on, we hope to put the application for membership on-line, in a form, so that you can automatically be added to our newsletter mailing list.

For security reasons, we DO NOT, for any reason, distribute our members list to any outside organization. That is our policy. We have a strict code concerning the confidentiality of the information that is given to us, formal or informal. Only under instances of abuse or possible harm would we notify the proper authorities.

All the contact information is located on the Contact Us page. We are more than happy to answer any questions you may have concerning CPAD or this website.

If you reached our page using Microsoft's Internet Explorer Browser, the program will prompt you to download a Chinese Language Reader. Click on the "OK" button to begin downloading the file. It should be between two to three megabytes. After the file is finished downloading, it will automatically install itself. Close out of Internet Explorer, by clicking on the "x" on the upper right hand corner of the window, and the next time you open your browser, you will be able to read Chinese.