Our Story

The Family Café began in 1998 when a group of parents of children with disabilities recognized their shared challenge in finding the information, resources, and knowledge they required to facilitate their children’s educational development. In response to this need, they came together to found The Family Café, an organization with the mission to provide individuals with disabilities and their families with an opportunity for Collaboration, Advocacy, Friendship and Empowerment by serving as a facilitator of communication, a space for dialogue, and a source of information.

To fulfill that mission, The Family Café created its signature event, The Annual Family Café. It would provide a unique environment, where families could connect with peers, commercial service providers, and public entities to find out what services are available to them, which best serve their needs, and how to go about securing those services, all in a family-friendly, welcoming environment that emphasizes community and inclusion.

Since its inception, The Annual Family Café has grown from about 1,200 attendees to more than 15,000 at its peak, becoming the largest statewide cross-disability event in the nation. The Family Café has always believed that well-informed people make the best possible decisions for themselves and their loved ones. The Annual Family Café provides the opportunity to put that principle into action. The event brings together thousands of Floridians with disabilities and their family members for three-plus days of information, training, and networking opportunities.

The idea of bringing together a wide range of information on a variety of disability-related topics is central to the event, which is designed such that families are afforded the opportunity to identify and take advantage of the content that is most relevant to their specific needs in a supportive environment that enables family-to-family connection. The core of the event is the collection of hour-long individual educational breakout sessions that make up the bulk of the agenda. In addition to individual breakout sessions, The Family Café also hosts a series of three keynote events at The Annual Family Café to highlight important topics that are relevant to people with disabilities and their families, and encourages dialogue and engagement between Floridians with disabilities and the state agencies and elected officials that serve them by hosting The Annual Summit on Disabilities. It also includes a large Exhibit Hall with all manner of vendors, adaptive recreation activities, self-advocate musical performances, and much, much more.  

The Family Café prides itself on supporting people with disabilities and their families as they seek to build lives in the community every day of the year. As successful as it is, The Annual Family Café is only one aspect of The Family Café’s ongoing efforts to serve the disability community.

• Family-Run Organization Movement (FROM). FROM engages, supports, and empowers local family-, youth- and peer-run organizations across Florida by providing leadership training, governance enhancement, program support, monthly collaborative forums, and other resources to help organizations attain new levels of participation in the system of care.
• Florida Youth Council (FYC). The FYC is a group of emerging leaders with disabilities that model leadership and advocacy among their transition-age peers across Florida that meets regularly to develop their leadership skills, publishes a monthly newsletter, and hosts its own Annual Youth Summit each August.
• The Annual Family Café Questions & Answers Book. Each year at The Annual Family Cafe, the project solicits questions and comments on Florida’s disability service delivery system from attendees. They are then distributed to state agency partners, and their collected responses are collated to create a resource guide that provides answers to some of the most common questions about Florida’s system of care for individuals with disabilities.
• “Let’s Talk!” Legislative Update Series. This weekly call recaps legislative developments and ongoing policy discussions on issues impacting individuals with disabilities. Experts with experience in state government and disability policy serve as guest speakers, and attendees are encouraged to share their thoughts and questions. 
• The CAFÉ TA Center. CAFÉ TAC is The Family Café’s federally-funded national technical assistance center for mental health. It provides mental health consumers, families, professionals, and other stakeholders in the mental health system with information, training, networking opportunities and support as they seek to advocate for themselves and transform the mental health system of care to allow for and encourage genuine consumer involvement and peer leadership.

Across all of its many activities, The Family Cafe remains committed to the belief that the concerns, needs, and experiences of individuals with disabilities and their families should drive the system. As an organization founded and operated by families, that also serves those same families, The Family Cafe embodies the adage “Nothing about us, without us,” and creates a place where families can develop their knowledge, connect with each other, and come to see themselves as valued, essential partners in the service delivery system.