Through the Looking Glass (TLG)

Mission

Through the Looking Glass (TLG) is a nationally recognized center that has pioneered research, training, and services for families in which a child, parent or grandparent has a disability or medical issue. TLG is a disability community based nonprofit organization, which emerged from the independent living movement, and was founded in 1982 in Berkeley, California. Our mission is "To create, demonstrate and encourage non-pathological and empowering resources and model early intervention services for families with disability issues in parent or child which integrate expertise derived from personal disability experience and disability culture."

Philosophy

People often ask about the name of our organization: Through the Looking Glass. The connotation of our name is that disability experience does not have to be just negative or traumatic. Like Alice's Through the Looking Glass experience, disability brings new perspectives that can engender creativity and new meanings -- even playfulness and humor! The reflection of the looking glass also points to the profound role people who have been through this process can play for one another.

At Through the Looking Glass, we emphasize a life cycle approach which integrates perspectives gained from personal and family disability experience. The dialog between non-peers, people with disabilities, parents of children with disabilities, siblings, spouses and adult children of parents with disabilities or deaf parents is sometimes hard and always fertile. TLG is a celebration of diverse perspectives and a demonstration that these perspectives can be bridged and that bridging them can produce particularly effective, empathetic and respectful family intervention as well as innovative approaches to research and training.

TLG staff includes nationally-recognized experts in their fields. Staff also continue to receive distinguished awards from such organizations as the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation and Zero to Three.  TLG's staff includes psychologists, researchers, occupational therapists, rehabilitation counselors, social workers, marriage, child and family therapists, developmental specialists, nurse, family law attorney and childbirth educators. The staff have diverse cultural backgrounds, fluency in many languages and nearly 80% of the 60 staff members are disabled, parents of disabled children, or members of families with disabilities.