A disability-affirming community for caregivers of neurodivergent and disabled kids.
Built by parents for parents, Care Lab offers steady connection, shared wisdom, and practical resources for navigating a world not built for our kids and families.
We offer 24/7 peer support, trusted resources, social events and workshops - so you don’t have to carry it all alone.
Inside Care Lab, You’ll Find:
Care Lab is here to support you, not add another demand.
We understand how much caregivers are navigating and holding every day - and our community platform is designed to support different schedules, energy levels, and access needs. You can connect live when it works for you or engage on your own time.
We welcome you to come as you are, when you can, with whatever it is you are carrying.
In our affirming community, caregivers bring real questions, share honestly about complex experiences, and get practical support. On any given day, you’ll find us talking through and holding space around:
school advocacy, IEPs, and eligibility meetings
making sense of evaluations and finding disability-affirming providers
navigating relationship strain, exhaustion, grief, perfectionism and fear
surviving school break, sharing joy and small wins
the daily work of staying connected to ourselves and our kids within a world that treats their access needs as afterthoughts - and treats exhausted caregivers as the ones who need to do better.
Our affirming community is part peer support, part learning space, part exhale.
Our Community Workshops + Gatherings
Alongside community conversation, we gather for live workshops, virtual meet ups, and in person gatherings, focused on nervous system care, self-compassion, and caregiver sustainability (without guilt or “shoulds”).
Sessions are led by parent-advocates and professionals and grounded in lived experience, trauma-informed care, and disability justice.
Check out a sampling of our past workshops and gatherings below!
“The Power of Parent Advocacy & Inspiring Partnerships”
Care Lab Moderator and Special Education Advocate Nicole Josey talks the importance of building partnerships with schools and community programs and shares advocacy tips with parents.
“Practices for Self-Compassion”
In this session, Chia-Ti Chiu explores tender and fierce self-compassion - and offers busy parents simple mindfulness and body-based practices to support sustainable care.
“Reimagining Social Stories”
In this workshop, Kim Takacs, SLP and Executive Director of Together We Bloom, explores behavior as communication and how simple, supportive routines can reduce stress - for kids and for parents.
We built Care Lab to help parents move from feeling isolated or inadequate to feeling supported, resourced, and less alone.
We built the place we need.
Our Story
We are so glad you’re here—welcome!
We’re Jessica and Rachel: social workers, community builders, and moms of neurodivergent kids. We met as parents first and became friends as we both started getting calls about our children’s differences being framed as deficits—problems to fix rather than kids to support.
Between us, we bring decades of experience supporting caregivers and young people across schools, nonprofits, and community programs.
But Care Lab isn’t about expertise from above. It’s about building the space we wish had existed earlier and which we need for the long haul—grounded in disability justice, held with care, and shaped by parents themselves.
Care Lab exists to make caregiving more collective, more sustainable, and less isolating. If you’re the parent of a neurodivergent or disabled child, teen, or adult, we hope you’ll join us!
Ready to find your people?
