In two years, the work Jillian Palmiotto has done to make the metro area a better place for special needs families has expanded from a small-scale outreach to a major resource that extends beyond the Georgia state line.
Her nonprofit, Together We Care, launched two years ago to support children with disabilities. It grew from Palmiotto’s years as a special education teacher and 10 years leading a special needs ministry at Mount Paran Church in Buckhead.
“In 2013, the church had about five families who wanted their kids to be included in programs the church offered,” said Palmiotto, who has a master’s in special education. “I developed some inclusion strategies, and in about eight years, we grew from working with five kids to about 170. It grew so fast because families were trying to find faith communities, but churches didn’t have the resources or knowledge around how to do inclusion.”
Within a few years, Palmiotto was getting calls from other churches around Atlanta to help them as well. In 2016, she ran an inclusion workshop that drew 35; the following year, the crowd grew to 70.
But when COVID struck, and families weren’t bringing their children to church, Palmiotto had another idea.
“I started calling them to see how we could best meet their needs, and it made me wonder who in our community was helping these people,” she said. “When I realized I should be doing this for more people, Together We Care was born.”
Palmiotto began by identifying families who needed transportation, caregivers, jobs, schools and medical care.
“I started pulling together all the systems that exist to support these families,” she said. “And I found that all the stuff that exists for people with disabilities is very siloed. Families are left to figure it out on their own, and many get misinformed from Facebook.”
Palmiotto developed a road map of needs that begins at the time of diagnosis and goes through different life stages. “We put it in order of seasons of life, so it covers things like pre-K and special education to finding adapted activities and alternatives for adults not going to college.”
Families quickly learned about the nonprofit’s free services and began reaching out. Today, the organization works with about 400 families from north Georgia to Warner Robins and Macon, and others located in nearby states. Along the way, Palmiotto and her husband, Anthony, went all in, selling their house in Kennesaw to fund the organization and teaching themselves how to write grants.
“We had generous people and volunteers who knew our hearts were pure, and we were doing this to help people,” she said. “Now we’re trying to empower other organizations and faith communities to learn to do what we do. We’re passionate about teaching whoever will listen.”
Information about the organization and its next inclusion conference is online at togetherwecarega.org.
Who’s doing good? Each week, we write about a deserving individual, charity events such as fun-runs, volunteer projects and other community gatherings that benefit a good cause. To suggest an event or person for us to cover, contact us at ajc.doinggood@gmail.com.
About the Author
