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)