Once you are comfortable in your role as a caregiver, additional training can equip you to help mentor other families through LifeLine. LifeLine acknowledges the importance of spiritual support and educational advocacy. Therefore, we have created two ways for you to participate in developing skills to support others in their journey: spiritual discipleship and educational mentorship. We welcome caregivers to participate in either or both opportunities.
Spiritual Discipleship
LifeLine presents a complete series of Biblically based studies that, 1) equip you to process and build your own spiritual foundation surrounding caregiving for someone with disabilities, 2) further build your capacity to support other families informally and/or through church ministry.
Some of the topics covered in our studies include:
- Understanding disability in light of the Gospel
- Parenting a child with special needs
- Navigating the daily challenges of caregiving
- Learning how to share the story of God’s glory with others
- Biblical worldview of disability
- God’s sovereignty
- Evil and suffering
- Theology of disability
- Ministry across lifespan
- Outreach and evangelism
- Networking
- Bioethics
- Acceptance vs belonging
- Transforming church culture
- Mental health service delivery
- Build resilience in ministry
- Engaging social justice efforts
- Mercy ministry
- Biblical advocacy
This is a perfect opportunity for those 
who have a desire for developing special needs ministry or women’s ministry within their local churches as well as for families who just want to be able to be able to answer questions or support others within their sphere of influence.
To learn more about these opportunities, visit LifeLine’s Bible Study page.
Educational Advocacy
LifeLine hosts the complete series of workshops through Volunteer Advocacy Project that will equip you to advocate for your child or support other families in their advocacy. These training opportunities will help you better understand special education proceedings and other service delivery systems. Topics that are covered include basic special education processes, communication strategies, IEP goal development, 504 plans, and the role of parent mentors. We offer training on transitions at early intervention, middle, and high school as well as transitions to adult life.
Volunteer Advocacy Project
The purpose of this project is to train volunteer advocates to provide instrumental and affective support to parents of children with disabilities. In this training, participants will learn more about special education law and advocacy strategies. At the end of the training, each participant will shadow an advocate at a special education meeting. Following graduation from the program, you will be linked with a family of a child with a disability. Each volunteer advocate is expected to work with, at least, four families, at the discretion of The Arc or STEP or LifeLine.
Once a year, there is a 13 week training. The training lasts 3 hours one weeknight or one weekday (beginning at 7:00-10:00PM (EST) or 10AM to 1PM (EST).
The training will include a binder of materials including passages from: the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, State law, No Child Left Behind, the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Additionally, the participants will be given copies of each training session’s power points along with relevant materials. For each training session, the participant will be expected to read pertinent materials. This will encourage full participation at the training sessions. The training will be held on the Vanderbilt campus in The Vanderbilt Kennedy Center. The training will also be video-conferenced to other sites across the state, including LifeLine, Inc. in Chattanooga, TN. This could also be conferenced to Northwest Georgia if there is enough interest.
Click Here to Register for Volunteer Advocacy Project online directly to Vanderbilt. Be sure to mark that you are registering for Volunteer Advocacy Project.