About Us

Consultation · Special Needs Advocacy · Placement

Our advocacy team coordinates and collaborates efforts for all our clients, allowing for cross-coverage and extra support.

Deborah Bloom, M.A.

Since 1994, Deborah has worked throughout Northern California and the Bay Area as an Educational Consultant and Special Needs Advocate. She has been assisting families with school planning for students in public schools, private schools, and programs that address special needs.

Deborah is uniquely qualified as a consultant and advocate resulting from her many years of experience working with families who have a wide range of issues; she understands the impact that an inappropriate school placement has on the family and student. She successfully advocates for students whose needs aren’t being met by their current placement. When a student requires a non-public school or residential setting due to educational, social, and emotional difficulties she works directly with the school staff to secure district placement and funding.

Before becoming an educational consultant, she received a Master’s Degree in Speech Pathology, and worked in several multi-disciplinary settings and schools in both the private and the public sectors, with a wide age range of students — from pre-school to young adults — with social-emotional, learning, and language delays.

She was a Program Specialist in the Santa Clara County Office of Education, responsible for one of the first teams of speech and language therapists implementing the newly passed Federal Legislation for Special Education. She consulted with teachers, parents, and administrators, in order to meet the unique needs of students. She also team-taught with an Occupational Therapist in a public-school Kindergarten program, providing direct, intensive intervention, with the goal of preventing at-risk five and six-year-olds from requiring special education intervention later in their school career.

Deborah has visited hundreds of private and public schools and classrooms while serving families from Santa Cruz to Sacramento. With extensive experience in child development, and school curriculum, including the issues surrounding the teaching methodologies for reading and math, Deborah understands the styles schools use to challenge their students, the social milieu on campus, and how that might affect student behavior. She continues to remain current in advancements in testing, language processing, special education law, and the issues surrounding the needs of exceptional students.

Deborah is a member of the Council of Parents, Advocates, and Attorneys. (COPAA). She is involved in several non-profit organizations aimed at improving California education funding or policy. Weaving together her training, interests, and observations, she draws upon this range of experience in ways that benefit her clients. She is committed to offering families guidance to help them determine which school setting and/or educational plan might work most effectively for their child. She encourages families to take a close look at both the academic and social environment of a potential placement. She makes every effort to provide information and insights that her clients find helpful as together they go through the process of educational planning for their children.

Cori Watson, M.A.

Cori is a consultant and joined the practice in 2022, having received training and certification in Special Education Advocacy from the Council for Parents, Advocates, and Attorneys (COPAA). Cori has dyslexia and is the mother of a child with ADHD and dyslexia, so advocacy for special
education needs has been a passion for many years.

Cori studied Child Development at California State University, Chico. Ultimately graduating and working in healthcare, running various pediatric clinics. Cori received her Master’s in Healthcare Administration from the University of Southern California. As an executive in the healthcare industry, Cori has led teams for clinical departments within hospitals across the Bay Area and administrative teams for a major international health insurance company.

However, after 20 years in healthcare, in 2022 she felt the need to make a major shift refocusing on her initial passion of helping children. Cori now feels a strong pull to help families much like her own, who have struggled with obtaining appropriate educational resources for their children.

Jennifer Barone Morrison

Jennifer is your first contact and quickly responds to a family’s concerns. She arranges and calendars phone calls, meetings and interactive video sessions with our team. She can also assist you with payment questions, uploading files and other various tasks. She will be happy to answer any questions you may have or assist you in any way.

Jennifer is the mother of three children with varying special needs and is very familiar with the IEP process and all of it’s challenges. Her children are now thriving because of the supports she fought to have in place throughout their academic careers. She wishes she had found Deborah Bloom sooner so she could have had the wisdom and guidance Deborah offers.

Jennifer has a degree in Liberal Studies with an extensive background in Child Development. She was the Dirctor of a non-profit, school-aged, recreational program in Lafayette for many, many years as well as a preschool teacher and substitute for her local school district. A self- proclaimed “life-learner”, she looks forward to studying to become a certified Special Education Advocate in the near future.

Thanks so much for your persistence, patience, and ingenuity in bringing the IEP process to a successful summit. No IEP process can be as hard as the trail we’ve been down. We particularly appreciate that you have always been available to us, providing emotional support as well as advice to navigate the special ed system. Of course, the most impressive coup of all was your role as catalyst in his school placement. For all your help, support and presence-thank you.
– Julie and Rick

Let's Work Together

Servicing Northern California and the Bay Area including:

Tracy
Livermore
Pleasanton
Dublin
Sunol
San Ramon
Danville
Walnut Creek
Pleasant Hill
Lafayette
Union City
Fremont
San Leandro
Hayward
Newark
Alameda
Oakland
Berkeley
Milpitas
Brentwood
Martinez
San Francisco
Daly City
San Bruno
Marin
Mill Valley
San Rafael
Corte Madera
Novato
San Jose
Santa Clara
Cupertino
Sunnyvale
Moutain View
Palo Alto
Redwood City
San Carlos
Assisting Families with:

  • IEEs
  • Assessments
  • School Districts
  • Settlement Agreements
  • Alternative Dispute Resolution
  • OCD
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
  • Sensory Processing Disorder
  • IEP Help
  • Autism Help
  • Dyslexia Help
  • Residential Placement
  • Wilderness Program

Livermore Location