Pemberley, we never actually hired an advocate, and our school never knew we'd consulted with an advocate. We were able to find a non-profit advocate's group that allowed us to call up and ask specific questions. They also reviewed our private evals and school paperwork etc so they'd understand as much as they could about our ds' needs and abilities etc.
The thing that consulting with an advocate helped us with the absolute most was understanding our local schools - even though Federal Law is the same everywhere in the US, the specific ways in which IDEA and ADA are implemented vary quite a bit, plus there are huge variations even within our school district re how accommodations etc are implemented, how school staff feels about accommodations etc - things like that. Plus the advocate's group was able to give us the language to use when talking to the school staff to give us the best "at bat" chance of getting our ds' needs met.
And I need to give a warning similar to Sia's - we haven't always been terribly successful! It took us 3 years to get an IEP, still had the school trying to tell us "everything is ok", once we had the IEP our ds wasn't given the help he needed and was outlined in the IEP, and ultimately our best successes for ds have come through private therapy that we've had to pay for, and this year we just absolutely bailed on the public schools here and went private because our ds was a mess emotionally both from not being challenged appropriately within the areas of his intellectual strengths and at the same time not being helped in the areas he really needed help. So that's my big disclaimer - and also my sincere wish that the journey is much easier for your family!
Best wishes,
polarbear
