Aging Answers - Episode 8 EP Magazine Transcript - Norris McLaughlin, P.A., Attorneys at Law

Episode 8: EP Magazine Transcript

Shana Siegel: Welcome to Norris McLaughlin’s Aging Answers, a limited podcast series discussing the key topics of elder law planning and long-term care. I’m your host, Shanna Siegel, practice group leader of the Elder Law Group and member at Norris McLaughlin. In this episode, I am joined by Faye Simon, editor-in-chief of Exceptional Parent Magazine. Hi Faye, how are you?

Faye Simon: Hi, Shana. Great. Thanks for having me.

Shana Siegel: So I wanted to ask you a little bit about Exceptional Parent, your magazine, how it got started, and the target audience.

Faye Simon: Exceptional Parent magazine has been around for over 50 years. I’ve been with it for about eight. It started out focused on children. That’s why the name Exceptional Parent Magazine, but we realized that children with disabilities grow up to be adults with disabilities and things happen along the way, whether it’s a disease or an accident where teens, adults, elderly can have special needs as well. The magazine provides. Information, resources, and inspiring stories on disabilities and special needs for all ages, from infancy to elderly. And we’ve been able to make the digital version free because we want everybody who can benefit from this information to have access for free. That’s what we call EP for free.

Shana Siegel: Got it. So, what made you and your husband, who works with you on the magazine, what made you interested in taking this project on?

Faye Simon: Well, I, by trade, am an early childhood teacher, and I’ve worked with many children with special needs. My husband, who is a business consultant, heard about the magazine, and at that time it was failing, and it was going to go through. through bankruptcy and I knew about the magazine. I knew how important it was to the special needs community. And so I basically told my husband, I will help you. Let’s save the magazine. And that’s what we’ve been able to do. It, we, it went from no print magazine. We brought the print magazine back. And it went from a handful of people who were paying for the digital version. So now we have the print magazine that we charge what it costs us, and we have the digital version that’s free as well as the monthly newsletter is free. And with a handful of advertisers, we keep it going. And we’ve been told by so many parents and teachers how much they appreciate us keeping the magazine going.

Shana Siegel: That’s really wonderful resource. And I was just going to ask that if you had heard about families, um, about, you know, specifics about how it’s helped them. Yeah.

Faye Simon: Oh, constantly, I have people saying they basically brought their child up on the magazine. I have people just telling me it’s phenomenal information. The print magazine is very important because there’s some people who can’t handle the digital version or just prefer the print. And it’s great for offices and camps and schools that they could put it out so many people can access the information.

Shana Siegel: Yeah, absolutely. How do you find article ideas and you know, where’s your content comes from?

Faye Simon: I reach out to people who I think would have information that would be great for the audience. And now that we’re getting more and more known, I’m constantly getting requests to contribute articles. So we have individuals with disabilities that contribute. We have families that contribute. We have teachers. We have financial professionals. We have legal professionals like you. It’s just a vast array of people who are contributing wonderful information and inspiring stories.

Shana Siegel: Great. Do you have a way for your readers to get more information on resources or providers or just to get, you know, information about resources?

Faye Simon: Well, they can always sign up for EP for free. And not only the current magazine is there, We archive several years of magazines and a lot of the information is just as true today as it was when it was first published. And of course they can go to EP magazine. com and they can sign up for EP for free. They will get an email every month to let them know when the issue is ready, and they will also, uh, Get the free monthly newsletter and they can always reach out to me at ep magazine vp at gmail. com Fay And ask i’ve had many many people and then I would connect them with some of the resources or the Contributors that might have information for them. Just wanted to add, because I think it’s very important, is we have a special military section every month for the unique challenges that military families face when they are caring for somebody with a disability.

Shana Siegel: That’s a really great resource because I know that there’s not a lot out there to, you know, information for those families. So it’s great. You do have a particular emphasis in New Jersey. You’re in New Jersey and it’s a national magazine, but there’s a lot of local information. So locally, there are a lot of resources that focus on fostering independence during like the post-21 transition. Is that an area that you, you know, particularly have, have focused on?

Faye Simon: No actually. We have, we are constantly expanding the areas and we have what we call themes and it could be anywhere from autism to early intervention to elderly to family and community. So we have. For each of the months, we have a theme, but there’s so many important topics for special needs and disabilities that we also have what we call features and we’re constantly expanding, constantly love when the readers write to us and say, Oh, I’d love more information about this. Or I haven’t seen an article about this because there are so many topics that would help families and our goal is to just help. Individuals, families, teachers, so that anybody with a disability or special need can just constantly improve their life and, and live to their full potential.

Shana Siegel: So I heard you just now, you said disability or special need, and I know that there’s a lot of kind of talk in the community about which term is appropriate. You know, there’s a lot of, I wouldn’t say controversy, but disagreement on use of the word special needs versus disability. Is that something that you have addressed in the magazine or how do you deal with that issue and when it comes up?

Faye Simon: Well, it doesn’t come up very often to be perfectly honest on our social media. I’m member with a tremendous amount of groups, maybe over 70 groups, and I would say more than half labeled themselves as special needs, mom’s special needs, dad’s special needs. I know that nobody I’ve talked to have said they would not use the word I have a disability. The only term that I have gotten That I don’t use, but I have heard, you know, people are more negative about would be disabled. And we feel that we want to focus on the ability, not the disability. And we even had a wonderful article about focus on the ability and disability because our feeling is. Everybody has weaknesses and strengths, and there are some people that have a disability that doesn’t define them. That is a part of them. And so we’re really trying to focus on the ability. That’s why the inspiring stories too, you know, have people. See what can be done, no matter where, what your weaknesses or disabilities are, and we’re very much trying to focus on awareness, inclusion, and acceptance across the board.

Shana Siegel: Right. Right. Yeah. No, I think there’s a lot of focus amongst individuals with a disability on empowerment. And as you said that everybody has abilities and that’s where I think there’s some, you know, uh, some people don’t like the, the language special needs because they have the same needs as in anyone else. We all have needs, but I, yeah, I very much well.

Faye Simon: It’s interesting. Because, you know, I’ve talked to different people and they said, well, you know, the majority of people I know, for instance, don’t need glasses. So I feel like I have glasses. That’s a special need. So, you know, it’s everybody’s, you know, perception, but I think that most important is the sensitivity and the focus on the ability and the inclusion and the acceptance is what’s most important, you know, and that’s what we want to do with the magazine.

Shana Siegel: Yeah. No, absolutely. And that same idea of empowerment and focusing on independence. That was really echoed by, I recently wrote an article for your magazine on supported decision making. That’s what supported decision-making is all about.

Faye Simon: I just mentioned it in a post just so you know.

Shana Siegel: Thank you. I appreciate that. But yes, we always want to focus on maximizing the independence and maximizing the ability of the individual.

Faye Simon: Yes. Absolutely. And it’s very interesting because one of my friends now I met her, she calls herself the one-handed lady golfer and we did a feature story on her. She’s very inspiring and she’s doing a lot of wonderful things for people who either have never golfed or haven’t been able to golf again to do adaptive golf, but she likes different ability. She says, maybe I do it differently, but I sure can get it done. So she likes different ability.

Shana Siegel: No absolutely. All right. Well, I really enjoyed speaking with you. Is there anything that you wanted to add and share with our audience before we close out?

Faye Simon: Just that, you know, I encourage them to sign up for EP for free. We had our 1st webinar today, we’re going to be having additional webinars. I know you and I have talked about doing a webinar together and they should always feel free to reach out to me and let me know what information they’d like to see more of, whether in a webinar or in the magazine as well. And I guess I could just put a little note out there, we are trying to keep the magazine going. So if there’s anybody who might want to advertise in the magazine to help us keep the magazine going, love to have them reach out as well.

Shana Siegel: Absolutely. That’s terrific. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Faye. This has been Norris McLaughlin’s Aging Answers. A limited podcast series discussing key topics revolving around elder law, long-term care planning, and special needs. I want to thank you, the listener, for being a part of our conversation, and thank you, Faye, for talking with us.

Faye Simon: Thank you for having me.

Shana Siegel: Be sure to tune in next time for a brand new episode, and if you’d like to learn more about our work, please email me at aginganswers@norris-law. com.