Presenter
Megan Kirshbaum
Through the Looking Glass
Megan Kirshbaum has a Ph.D. in Psychology and has been a family and infant/parent therapist for infants, children, or parents with disabilities in the disability and independent living community since 1974. In 1982 she founded TLG and has been its Executive Director, providing supervision and training and directing its national centers for parents with disabilities. She was the 1996 Betts Award Laureate for “innovative dedication to improving quality of life for people who live with disabilities worldwide” and in 2008 received the first Alexander Tymchuk award for “exemplary contributions to the field of parenting by persons with intellectual disabilities.” As a Mid-Career Fellow in Zero to Three she initiated critiquing evaluations of parents with disabilities in child protective services systems in the U.S. She has served as an expert witness in custody cases involving parents with disabilities in ten states. She analyzed NYC child welfare practice with parents with intellectual/cognitive disability for a class action legal proceeding. She also provided training that informed seminal legislation regarding parents with disabilities passed in Idaho, and was the third author of NCD’s Rocking the Cradle: Ensuring the Rights of Parents with Disabilities and their Children. She has conducted hundreds of trainings regarding parents or children with disabilities and their families including statewide child protection systems in Idaho, Kansas and Oklahoma, the United Nations, regions of Japan, NICH-D/NIH, APA, and a Department of Defense/Zero to Three summit regarding military families. She has personal as well as family disability experience.