About Lorien Advocacy
Support that starts with your child's strengths, not their file.
Lorien Advocacy utilizes neurodiversity-affirming, strengths-based approaches to provide consultative special education advocacy for families navigating IEPs, evaluations, and school teams.
About Shahin
I'm a former special education teacher, current university lecturer, and PhD candidate in Education at UC Davis. My doctoral research examines special education through a critical systemic lens: looking at how students, families, educators, and administrators experience the same processes very differently.
I started Lorien Advocacy to bring that combination of classroom experience, research, and policy knowledge directly to families who are navigating the special education system and need someone who understands both the paperwork and the child behind it.
How I work
Neurodiversity-affirming
Differences in how a child learns, communicates, or processes the world are treated as differences to design around, not deficits to fix.
Strengths-based
Advocacy starts from what your child does well, and builds support around that rather than centering only on challenges.
Collaborative
The goal is a working relationship with the school team, not an adversarial one. However, I'll recommend when something needs to be pushed on.
Family-centered
You are the defacto expert on your child, and know them better than anyone in the room. My job is to help you leverage that knowledge effectively within the system.
If you're not sure where to start, that's a normal place to be.
Start with a conversation