BCEdAccess Society

It all started with a Facebook Group!

In late 2014, parent advocate Tracy Humphreys created a Facebook group because she recognized a critical gap in the advocacy landscape. While many excellent organizations existed to support families navigating specific disabilities—autism, Down syndrome, learning disabilities, ADHD—no community brought all these parents together to discuss the challenges we share in common when trying to access education for our children. The barriers looked different across diagnoses, but the patterns were identical: accommodation denials, exclusion practices, institutional resistance, exhausting advocacy cycles, and the grinding work of securing rights already guaranteed under law.

That small gathering of parents grew rapidly as families recognized they were not alone, that the institutional barriers they faced were systemic rather than individual failures, and that collective knowledge and peer support could transform how families navigate educational crises. The group attracted strong, experienced parent advocates as founding members who set the tone and direction that continues today—centering disability justice, refusing to accept that exclusion is inevitable, and building the collective expertise needed to hold systems accountable.

By 2018, it became clear that this community served an ongoing, critical need that extended beyond peer support into systemic advocacy. BCEdAccess incorporated as a society in November 2018 and became a registered charity in early 2020. Today, our private Facebook group has grown to over 5000 members, making it one of the largest parent-led disability advocacy communities in British Columbia. Parents share experiences, answer each other’s questions, provide emotional support during crises, exchange information about rights and legal frameworks, celebrate victories, and build the solidarity that sustains families through years of advocacy work.

Our Facebook community today

The Facebook group remains at the heart of BCEdAccess, operating as a confidential space where families can speak honestly about institutional harm, share strategies that work, warn each other about practices that don’t, and find the peer support that makes continued advocacy possible. Parents help each other understand human rights frameworks, decode institutional language, document harm effectively, and navigate complaint processes. The collective knowledge in this community represents decades of combined experience with every school district in the province, every type of disability, and nearly every barrier families encounter when trying to access education.

Join our Facebook community

• Public page: Like our public Facebook page, BCEdAccess Society Public Page – Action for Access to Education, for updates on systemic advocacy work, new resources, workshop announcements, and policy developments affecting disabled students across BC.
• Private parent support group: Search ‘BCEdAccess’ on Facebook and request to join the private group for parents and guardians of children with disabilities and complex learners in BC. This is a confidential peer support space where families share experiences, ask questions, and support each other through educational barriers and advocacy challenges. You must answer all membership questions to be added—this helps us maintain the safety and integrity of the community.

The private group operates under clear community guidelines: what is shared in the group stays in the group, no identifying information about schools or staff should be posted, and the space centres non-judgmental, trauma-informed peer support. Silence is welcomed for reflection, and members respond with thoughtfulness and care, recognizing that sharing stories of institutional harm can be triggering and that families come from different cultural contexts with different approaches to advocacy and parenting.

Whether you’re in crisis and need immediate support, navigating your first IEP meeting, preparing for a human rights complaint, or just trying to understand why your child keeps coming home in distress, this community offers the peer support and accurate information that can transform how you approach advocacy and help you recognize that you are not alone in facing these barriers.