WINNER Wanda Felty
Hospital and now a community leadership and advocacy coordinator for the Center for Learning and Leadership at the health complex. The federally-funded program oversees evidence-based training of future professionals working with people with developmental disabilities. “I take my knowledge of policy and legislation and lived experience to train students on what it’s really like to have a child with a disability,” explains Felty. She also helps state agencies work together with parents of children with disabilities to hone and modify programs, policies or legislation meant to help people with disabilities.
Wanda Felty keenly remembers sitting at her kitchen table in Spiro, Okla., calling every government agency she could think of in an attempt to get some help for her middle daughter Kayla, who was born with developmental disabilities. “I was crying because I was on the brink,” remembers Felty. “I had a teen daughter and a baby and Kayla, who was not sleeping. I needed help.” Felty still doesn’t know who expedited Kayla to the top of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services Developmental Disabilities Services list, but it was about a week later that she received the call that Kayla would receive two hours of personal care per day. That changed Felty’s world, and she’s spent much of her life since, personally and professionally, doing the same for others. “The most inspiring thing about Wanda is how she uses this lived experience with her daughter to offer personal support and encouragement to other families who have children with developmental disabilities,” said Felty’s husband, Rick, who nominated her. After a divorce, Felty raised her three daughters on her own for awhile, until she met and eventually married Rick when Kayla was in ninth grade. Not long after, it was Rick who encouraged Felty’s current career at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, initially as a family advocate through The Children’s
WANDA AND DAUGHTER KAYLA
Felty helps parents and professionals understand the importance of creating interdisciplinary teams, with each of their input, along with the self-advocate they are serving, valued by all members of the team. That’s a process that hasn’t always come easily for Felty. On many occasions, she’s felt very alone in her journey, exhausted by what has felt like a constant fight for Kayla to enjoy the life she deserves. “What I’ve learned through training is that we all need each other to make the best decisions for my daughter,” said Felty. “I had to learn to value the professionals’ knowledge and they learned to value mine. I used to feel like everyone was against us; come to find out they are all really for us.” Born without the middle portion of her brain forming correctly, Kayla is blind and non-
“Advocacy is not always about holding up signs. It’s really about holding each other up, figuring out what worked for me and how that can help you.” Wanda Felty
“There may be a practice or program that was created with good intentions,” said Felty, “but we can share parents’ stories about how they can work better for families like theirs.”
METROFAMILYMAGAZINE.COM / MAY 2020 11
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