Dear FEASTers,

Please forward this message to any adult you know (aged 18+) who has a
sibling with special needs. The survey, supervised by a faculty member
at Vanderbilt, addresses many important issues related to caregiving
for people with disabilities and will be useful for feminist research
on many related topics.

Best,
Sophia

Sophia Wong, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus
www.sophiawong.info

- - Please forward widely - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hi,

We are three high school students who are trying to make a difference
by gaining insight into what it is like to be an adult sibling of a
person with special needs.
Our previous study focused on children (ages 5-17) who have a sibling
with special needs. Thanks to the support of Don Meyer from the
Sibling Support Project (www.siblingsupport.org) and other Sibshop
organizers around the USA, we were able to send out over 1,300 surveys
to siblings nationwide. The wonderful people at Parenting Special
Needs magazine published many of our findings that we hope made a
difference with many families.
(http://parentingspecialneeds.org/article&article=263).

In addition, we were privileged to be asked to present our findings at
the 1st International Sibling Conference (Greenwich, CT, Summer 2010
http://siblingconference.org/). We were encouraged to continue with
our research by so many adult siblings we met at the conference, so we
are excited to be contacting you about our new study.

It is our hope that by surveying numerous adults (18 years or older)
that have a sibling with special needs, we will be able to gain a
deeper understanding of this relationship in an effort to help as many
people as possible. We are working in consultation with Dr. Ann Kaiser
from Vanderbilt University (http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/x4862.xml)
and with support from Don Meyer, the co-founder and president of the
National Sibling Support Project (www.siblingsupport.org), the Sibling
Leadership Network (www.siblingleadership.org) and many others from
the International Sibling Conference.

We hope that you will take some time to complete our new adult sibling
survey and that you will also pass this along to all adult siblings
(18 and older) that you know or anyone that may know an adult sibling
that they can forward this to.

All responses will be kept confidential but we will be glad to share
our findings with you if you send us a separate email to
[log in to unmask] Please type "Sibling Survey Participant" in the
subject line of the email, to maintain confidentiality. We also hope
to share our overall findings with as many people as possible through
sibling support groups, sibling conferences, and publications focused
on helping the families of people with special needs.

Here is a link to the survey:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Adult-Sibling-Survey

Please consider helping our efforts by forwarding this to any adult
sibling you think may be interested and willing to participate. Thank
you for helping us in our efforts to make a difference.

A few important notes:
• If you need the survey in a different language (Spanish, French,
Chinese, Japanese, German, Italian…) please send us an email at
[log in to unmask] asking for the survey in your preferred language.
• Once you start the survey, please complete it because your responses
will not be saved if you leave the website.
• An asterisk * indicates that the question must be answered to
continue with the survey.

Thank you for your participation!
Morgan Blueglass, Elyse Blueglass, Amanda Buonagurio
(Somers High School, NY & Yorktown High School, NY)