Special Education Advocate

Okay, state your full name.

Buckley J. Hugo. The thing to remember is that “Hugo” is the last name. There've been a lot of different incarnation of my name over the years.

Hugo McBuckley, I'm sure...

And a lot worse than that.

Tell me about it. So you're a professional children's advocate?

Yeah. Children with special needs, specifically. I'll give you some background.

When my son was diagnosed with being autistic, he was about four years old - he's almost 13 now.  We started dealing with the school district. What do we do? What is this realm of special education? Do children all just receive the same services, or is it individualized? And fortunately we found out that it is individualized to what the student needs. So when we started working with our school district, the first thing we got sent was called a Notice of Procedural Safeguards, which is a legal document they're required to send to all parents, saying what they're rights are with special education. And I was one of the few parents who probably actually read it, and realized as I was reading it that, Wow, there's a lot of good stuff in it for parents.

So that just started a one-thing-after-another kind of thing. My wife and I were advocating for our son to make sure he was getting the proper services in the school system so that he could learn in the school environment. And for every child that has a disability of some kind, whether or not it's a learning disability, or if it's some kind of diagnosis like autism or dyslexia, deafness or hearing impairment or blind, they fall under the federal and state guidelines of special education for what services those kids are supposed to get.

Now, as my wife and I began doing this with the school difference, we realized that in dealing with districts and getting services for you children, a lot of the same business principals that I was familiar with applied.  The school districts will say, Well, this is what I can give you. But in reality, if you know what to ask for, and know how to ask for it, and know what you reasonably are entitled to receive from the school district, you can get additional services. We moved up here two years ago and found that many parents are just not equipped to deal with school districts and getting the proper services for their children.

I'll say.

When we first moved up here, a couple of years ago…

From where?

New Jersey. We live in Brunswick, and we first reached out to the special education director there, talking about making the transition up here. And although we had a good sense of what was going to happen, we received some push-back as to what we wanted and what the school district thought they could provide. And we were concerned that we weren't going to be able to get all the services we thought our son needed. So I started doing some research to see if we could find an advocate in Maine, someone to help us, who at least knew what we could ask for. And we found out there was basically only one person in the entire state who was working as a private advocate. In the state of Maine, there are a lot of different public agencies which help parents to some degree, but the degree to which they can do it is pretty limited. Some state agencies have strict income limits, like you have to be completely on MaineCare, or they have limits like, “We can only help you if your child isn't getting any special education services. If your child is getting some special education services, we can't help you.” There are some private attorneys who work in this area, but they're very expensive. So a lot of parents need something in between. They couldn't get individual help from the state, and they couldn't afford an attorney.

So we reached out to the one advocate who could help us, and he said that he was too booked up. So we started doing this ourselves and learned a lot along the way. And we looked at the state and federal laws and saw that they're good, for the most part, and have a lot of protections for parents, but a lot of parents don't know about it.

So, since that time, that advocate that I mentioned has closed down his business, so now there's no one in the state doing this. But the one thing that I've been finding out consistently from talking with different people at the state level and people working with different social agencies, is that there is a great need for this service. So about a year ago I opened my doors and I've been working with clients since.

Got a web site or something?

Right now it’s www.midcoastadvocacy.com, but I think we’re going to change that.

Well, Buckley J. Hugo, I think you've found an important niche. Good luck!