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When people with developmental disabilities and their families identify problems with the systems meant to support them, what does it take to turn those concerns into meaningful change? It’s a question that can feel abstract, even bureaucratic, until it’s your own family, your own child, your own future. On Friday, Oct. 23, the UCLA Tarjan Center will bring that question into sharp focus during its 2026 Forum in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities, a free, virtual gathering designed to bridge the distance between lived experience and policymaking. Titled “From Advocacy to Action: Building Better Disability Services,” the forum will open with a conversation between Pete Cervinka, Director of the California Department of Developmental Services (DDS), and Dr. Jasper Estabillo, the Tarjan Center’s Director of Training. Together, they will explore how state agencies, researchers, providers, and advocates can move beyond listening to actually doing things differently. The timing is particularly important, because California’s developmental services system is undergoing significant changes, and UCLA and DDS have just launched a new three-year partnership focused on employment, leadership development, and access to disability information. That initiative will combine advocacy training, UCLA’s PEERS for Careers employment readiness program, individualized coaching, and paid internship opportunities at UCLA or DDS, while also expanding community training and creating more accessible resources for people who need them. The forum is designed for everyone—state leaders, researchers, clinicians, advocates, family members, and, most importantly, people with lived experience—to sit in the same virtual room and wrestle with the gap between what people say they want and what systems actually deliver.
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For Pete Cervinka, improving systems can begin with something as simple and human as giving people greater access to their own information. During a pre-forum interview with Holly Oliver, a Disability Rights Advocate at the Tarjan Center, Cervinka offered a relatable analogy: very few of us would trust a bank that didn’t let us log in from our own computer and see our own account information. Yet too often, people with developmental disabilities and their families find themselves locked out of their own service records, unable to see what decisions are being made about their lives or why. That small example points to a larger issue at the heart of the forum: how government can move from hearing what people want to actually implementing changes they can feel. Cervinka and Estabillo’s discussion will examine how DDS incorporates community priorities, uses data to identify disparities, measures whether services are genuinely working, and creates accountability for following through on change. It’s easy for agencies to say they value lived experience, but the harder question is what gets done differently after that experience is shared. Dr. Yasamin Bolourian, Director of Outreach and Dissemination at the UCLA Tarjan Center, puts it plainly: “We want self-advocates and families asking those questions in the same spaces as people who make policy, provide care, and conduct research.” That means making sure the people who live with the consequences of policy are not just invited to the table, but actually heard. It also means treating families and self-advocates as partners in shaping the system, rather than as afterthoughts or recipients of services designed far away from their daily realities.
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The rest of the forum carries those questions forward through a series of sessions focused on trust, mental health, and education. In the first major session, Bolourian will moderate “Who Do You Trust? Navigating Mistrust and Misinformation in Disability Spaces.” This panel will explore a dilemma many families know all too well: what do you do when information from researchers, providers, service systems, social media, advocacy organizations, and personal experience doesn’t line up? With so many competing voices and so much at stake, it can be incredibly difficult to know where to turn for reliable guidance. The panelists come from a rich mix of perspectives: Dr. Rujuta Wilson, a UCLA researcher; Andy Imparato, Executive Director of Disability Rights California; Areva Martin, founder of the Special Needs Network; and self-advocates Wesley Witherspoon and Kathleen Barajas. Each will bring their own experiences navigating systems that are supposed to help but sometimes create confusion, fear, or even harm. The conversation is especially timely in an era of misinformation, when well-meaning families may find themselves drawn to unproven treatments or distrustful of evidence-based care. Rather than simply telling people to trust the experts, the panel will ask how trust is earned, how institutions can be more transparent, and how people with disabilities and their families can make informed decisions without being dismissed or patronized.
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Mental health will be another major focus of the day, and for good reason. Too often, the emotional well-being of people with developmental disabilities is overlooked or misunderstood. Clinical psychologist Dr. Tony Attwood will present on mental health and neurodevelopmental disabilities, moderated by Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson, Director of UCLA Tarjan Center. Laugeson emphasizes that many young people with autism, ADHD, and other neurodevelopmental disabilities experience anxiety, depression, and loneliness—not because of their diagnosis itself, but because of the ways they are treated, excluded, or left unsupported in everyday life. “Understanding these concerns requires us to look beyond a diagnosis and consider what is happening in a young person’s everyday life at school, at home and in their community,” she says. That insight will be followed by a panel moderated by UCLA psychiatrist Dr. Brandon Ito, featuring Dr. Kashia Rosenau from UC-LEND, Dr. Laurie Stephens from The Help Group, self-advocates Kecia Weller and Olivia Raskin, and parent advocate Sarah Fetter. Together, they will examine how mental health support can better reflect the real experiences and priorities of people with developmental disabilities. The session will challenge narrow clinical views and push toward a more holistic understanding of what it means to thrive—not just to be stable, but to feel connected, valued, and hopeful. It’s a necessary reminder that mental health care cannot be separated from the social conditions that shape it, including isolation, bullying, family stress, and the constant pressure to fit into a world that wasn’t designed for everyone.
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The forum will conclude by turning to education, another area where good intentions often collide with real-world barriers. Dr. Jan Blacher, Distinguished Researcher at UC Riverside and UCLA, will discuss neurodiversity-affirming approaches across K–12 and postsecondary education. That means moving away from trying to make neurodivergent students appear “normal” and instead valuing the way they learn, communicate, and experience the world. Blacher’s presentation will be followed by a response from Crystal Lam, a neurodivergent community health worker and advocate, and the session will be moderated by Dr. Christine Moody, Postsecondary Education and Employment Specialist at the Tarjan Center. This is especially important because education is often where advocacy first begins—and where it can hit the hardest walls. Parents learn early that they must fight for accommodations, fight for inclusion, fight for basic respect, and then fight again when their children age out of school and face an adult world that is often unprepared to welcome them. The session will ask what schools and universities can do differently to affirm neurodivergent students from the start, rather than treating them as problems to be managed. It will also explore the transition to employment and independent life, where so many young adults with developmental disabilities are left without a map. By placing the voices of researchers and self-advocates side by side, the forum hopes to model what true collaboration looks like—not with one group speaking for another, but with everyone having a real role in shaping the conversation.
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The UCLA Tarjan Center Forum in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities will take place Friday, Oct. 23, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Pacific time. The event is free, virtual, and open to the public, with opportunities for audience members to submit questions during the sessions. Live interpretation will be available in American Sign Language, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Tagalog, with Zoom captioning available in 35 languages. Recordings and related plain-language conversations will also be shared after the event, so people who cannot attend live can still participate in the learning. Registration is available at bit.ly/4fsSJ7O, with more information on the UCLA Tarjan Center website. The Tarjan Center itself is a federally designated University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, serving as a bridge between UCLA and community organizations, government agencies, policymakers, people with disabilities, and their families. Its mission is to advance self-determination, inclusion, and quality of life for people with disabilities—and this forum is a powerful expression of that mission. In the end, the day is about more than a schedule of talks. It’s about creating a space where people who are often talked about can finally do some talking themselves. It’s about asking not just what systems are doing, but whether what they are doing is making life better for the people they exist to serve. And it’s about moving from advocacy to action, one honest conversation at a time. Whether you are a family member, a professional, a self-advocate, or simply someone who cares about building a more just and compassionate world, this forum offers a chance to learn, connect, and become part of that change. The invitation is open. The question is whether we are ready to move from words to action.