Laura Kender, who is in charge of helping families with children from before birth until they turn 18 in Tarrant County, TX, will give the keynote address at CIFR’s Part C IDEA Fiscal Forum (IFF) on May 9, 2023. The IFF provides opportunities for Part C coordinators, state directors of special education, and state IDEA fiscal specialists to build knowledge and capacity by connecting and sharing with peers and staff from CIFR and other national technical assistance centers.
Kender is the chief of child and family services at My Health My Resources of Tarrant County, which helps families by providing a range of community-based services for youths and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, mental health conditions, and substance use disorders, as well as for babies and young children with developmental delays.
She is helping the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention promote their “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” program, and for 22 years she has been a member of Texas’s Early Childhood Intervention Advisory Committee. In 2020 she received First3Years’s T. Berry Brazelton, M.D., Infant Mental Health Advocacy Award. Kender has a master’s degree in educational administration with a focus on early childhood and special education.
“Laura has been advocating for children with disabilities and their families at national, state, and local levels for more than two decades. She will speak about building and financing a coordinated, comprehensive, and sustainable family-focused early childhood system,” said CIFR’s IDEA Part C Co-Lead Leslie Fox.
The CIFR team is very much looking forward to welcoming Part C Coordinators and other state staff across the country to Atlanta on May 9–11. For more on the conference program:
- Review the preliminary agenda.
- Watch “Meet Us in Atlanta: What to Expect from CIFR’s 2023 IDEA Part C Fiscal Forum” (2:04):
- Learn about the conference theme. Watch “Purpose-Driven Data: Putting the ‘Why’ Into Fiscal Processes” (1:48)
For more information about the event, contact us.
