Parent Carer Participation
Good Practice Bulletin
November 2014
In this bulletin
Improving services
Norfolk – SEND information
sessions
Bedfordshire –closure of
hospital services
Strengthening Parent
Carer Participation
Bury – using interpreters to
reach more parents
Hertfordshire – identifying
diversity of members
News
DH guides: health input to
SEND
DfE funded support update
Improving services
Area: Norfolk – Informing & consulting with
parent carers about SEND Reforms
Forum: Family Voice, Norfolk
Website: www.familyvoice.org.uk
Contact: [email protected]
Activity:
Family Voice, working with Norfolk County Council, Clinical
Commissioning Groups and voluntary sector, co-produced Norfolk’s response to
the SEND reforms. From this a need for wider communication to inform parent
carers of the changes to SEN legislation was identified. Subsequently Norfollk
County Council funded the parent carer forum to run eight workshops across the
county, offering both morning and evening sessions, enabling the wider voice to
be heard. The forum sent information about the workshops to schools, voluntary
sector organisations, children’s centres and asked Norfolk County Council to
pass information on to families with children on Norfolk’s Register for Disabled
Children.
Outcomes:
The response to the invitation to these events was considerable. Many parent
carers who couldn’t attend the workshops contacted the forum before and after
the events asking for information about the SEND reforms. The publicity about
the events resulted in a sharp increase in membership for Family Voice, resulting
in 25 new applications to join the forum. This represented 6.4% growth in one
month.
Why this works:
The forum were able to inform parent carers about current changes to
government legislation whilst also hearing and then feeding back on, parent
carers’ views on local provision and services.
This ensured the forum represented a wide parent carer voice to Norfolk County
Council, as well as working with the LA to disseminate information about the
changes due to take place over the coming months.
The feedback from the LA was very positive - they particularly liked that the
report did not seek to interpret what parents had said but simply told it as it is!
And out of this valuable piece of work the forum were able to significantly
increase their membership.
You can download a more detailed report on this at
www.familyvoice.org.uk/images/FV%20SEND%20Report.pdf
If you have an innovative and effective example of Parent Carer Participation or know of something that might be useful
to share, please send it to [email protected], or in England to your regional parent carer participation advisor.
Improving services
Working with CCG on
withdrawal of paediatric
services at Bedford Hospital
Forum: Bedford Borough Parent
Carer Forum
Email:[email protected]
In July 2013, some paediatric services,
including inpatient care and the Open Access Service
(a service that fast tracks families to paediatric services,
bypassing A&E) were temporarily withdrawn from Bedford
Hospital by the clinical commissioning group (CCG), due to
safety and quality concerns.
Activity:
The parent carer forum had also identified some issues
with paediatric care at the hospital and welcomed the
opportunity to work with the CCG to improve those
services. On October 2013, the forum organised a meeting
where the CCG came to present their ideas about future
plans. Twenty families attended so the CCG was able to
hear directly from families who accessed paediatric services.
Parents talked about the impact on their families of the
temporary closure of certain paediatric services.
The forum also provided parent carer representatives to
sit on a paediatric stakeholder forum alongside health and
social care professionals and other key stakeholders. When
the CCG and Bedford Hospital started to plan bringing
services back, the forum represented the parent carer voice
at planning meetings.
Outcomes:
Meeting forum members, particularly at the open forum
meeting, gave CCG representatives a greater understanding
of what services were needed locally and helped to ensure
that Open Access and A&E arrangements returned.
Feedback was given that the experiences of parents helped
to guide discussions on the ‘minimum’ level of interim
services put in place at Bedford Hospital once the decision
to pause the consultation was taken.
The CCG gained greater understanding of special
educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and the
disproportionate impact of the interim services on families.
The forum were able to have an influence on the
reinstating of interim services.
The forum is continuing their joint working by feeding into
the current Bedfordshire Healthcare Review.
The result of this work has meant that the forum and CCG
now have an excellent working relationship of benefit to
both parties.
“Bedford Borough Parent Carer Forum was
particularly supportive in facilitating a strong
parent/carer voice throughout the process. They
helped to identify parents/carers to join our
stakeholder forum, hosted a focus group with
Bedford families and carers and also sent out
regular updates on changes to services.”
Bedfordshire Clinical Commissioning group
Communication and Engagement Team
Why this worked:
The Forum had links with families who frequently used
Bedford Hospital paediatric services so were able to
provide direct evidence of how the current system was not
sufficiently meeting the needs of many families.
Through regular attendance at strategic meetings,
forum representatives became known and respected as
representing the parent voice. Consequently, the CCG were
willing to work with the Forum as they had already linked
with them through hospital and board meetings.
Both the Forum and the CCG were willing to work together
to ensure services were in place that would work for the
families who use them.
New resource for health commissioners and forums
Do you want help explaining to health commissioners and Clinical Commissioning Groups how
health services for disabled children work (or don’t work) , parent participation and the special
educational needs and disability (SEND) reforms?
We have recorded a seminar, Improving health services for disabled children, which addresses
all of these issues, including health input to the special educational needs and disability (SEND)
reforms and Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans. Please recommend it to your local health
commissioners and CCGs. Forums might find watching the webinar helpful to preparing for meetings with health.
If you want a copy of the PowerPoint slides to adapt for your own use email [email protected]
Strengthening Parent Carer Participation
Bury Parent Forum – Working
with trainee interpreters to
reach the Asian community
Hertfordshire: identifying
diversity of parent carer forum
members
Forum: Bury Parents Forum
Web: www.buryparentsforum.org.uk
Email: [email protected]
Forum: Hertforshire Parent Carer
Involvement
Web: www.hertsparentcarers.org.uk
Email: [email protected]
Activity:
The parent carer forum held an information day for families,
inviting local organisations to have stalls. At that event they
made links with ADAB, a local voluntary organisation who
were running courses for people to train as interpreters.
The parent carer forum knew they would benefit from
interpreters attending some of their events, so liaised with
ADAB to offer ‘on-the-job’ experience to the interpreters
undergoing training.
Outcomes:
As a result of the forum’s link with ADAB, they were able to
offer a skills building course for Asian families who did not
have English as a first language.
Having interpreters enabled the parent carer forum to reach
parents who would not normally attend training or meetings
because of the language barrier.
This resulted in more confident and informed parents
who were better able to represent their child’s needs to
professionals in meetings. One parent fed back that they
now felt able to attend the Team Around the Child (TAC)
meetings on their own and confident enough to ask if they
did not understand what was being discussed.
Activity:
The forum decided to gather monitoring information
about parent carers attending forum events after the local
authority asked how representative the forum was. The
forum adapted the local authority’s BAME monitoring form
obtained from the commissioning team.
One side of the form is made up of an evaluation of the
event, and the other asks attendees for information such
as if they are disabled, a lone parent, whether their child
receives free school meals from Year 3 upwards, what they
consider their ethnic background to be, whether they are
male or female. There is an option to not answer.
The form is printed on colour paper to distinguish it from
other papers gathered at events and to help with collating
the information.
The forum wanted to be able to identify the range of
parents they are representing as well as be able to offer
help with transport and childcare costs for low-income
parents to attend.
Outcomes:
The trainee interpreters also attended an information day
organised by the parent carer forum, enabling the parent
carer forum to engage with the wider community.
The forum were able to monitor the backgrounds of people
attending events and demonstrate they were reaching
fathers, families from BAME communities, those on low
incomes, parent carers with disabilities and lone parents.
Why this worked:
The forum is gradually building up a picture of the diversity
of their membership through the information they obtain.
This is a great example of co-working between the
parent forum, a local voluntary organisation (ADAB) and
volunteers.
Everyone benefitted – the volunteer interpreters gained
valuable experience from working with families who have
children with additional needs, the parent forum were
able to reach and engage parents who may otherwise not
have attended meetings/training and the local voluntary
organisation was able to offer practical experience to
volunteers attending the interpreting course.
The forum also benefited from the experience the
volunteers brought with them; for example one was a nurse
at the local hospital.
The forum can demonstrate in the service level agreement
with their Local Authority that they are working to be
representative of their diverse community which can help in
securing future LA funding.
Why this worked:
The forum were clear on what they wanted to achieve from
gathering monitoring information around a range of issues
from identifying BAME communities in their area to those
on low income.
They developed a simple but effective process of
ensuring those who attended forum events complete
evaluation forms and that this information is then collated,
anonymising the forms.
The forum had a clear purpose for the information being
gathered.
News for forums
*SEND reforms implementation
survey* – fill in now*
The latest SEND survey has been sent to parent
carer forums and local authorities (LA’s). LA’s
and health have a legal duty to implement the
Children and Families Act 2014.
This is your forum’s opportunity to let the
Department for Education know how the
implementation of the SEND reforms is going
in your area and let NHS England know which
local clinical commissioning groups are slow in
implementing the reforms.
If the parent carer forum and LA responses differ
significantly, this will highlight potential issues to
the DfE/NHS England which they can address. It is
vital that forums feed in their views for this reason.
For transparency, forums and LA’s may wish to
discuss and complete their surveys together.
You can complete the survey online. A word
version of the survey is available to help you
consult with your forum members. For further
information or queries, please contact Helen
Jones.
National Network of Parent Carer
Forums’ AGM
Our largest and most successful national parent carer
participation event and National Network of Parent Carer
Forums’ AGM took place on 1 October in London. See the
highlights video from the day and keep an eye on the
Learning and events for forums web page for further
presentations and videos from the day.
New guidance from the DH
Children with special educational and complex needs:
Guidance for Heath and Wellbeing boards. Sept 2014.
Health and Wellbeing Boards have a pivotal role to play
in supporting how the health, social care and education
support the needs of children with complex and SEN needs
in light of the SEND reforms. This is a useful document for
forums to signpost their HWB contacts to.
See www.gov.uk (search on title)
Need help writing a financial
control policy?
A financial control policy describes how the forum will
authorise and record financial transactions. An example of
one can be downloaded from the Contact Family website at
www.cafamily.org.uk/runaforum.
Latest information for parent carers from Contact a Family
SEN reforms in England
Contact a Family, working with the NNPCF have developed a series of factsheets to help families understand recent
changes to the special education system in England.
• Introduction to the Children and Families Act 2014
• Extra support in mainstream school - SEN support
• Education, Health and Care needs assessments
• Education, Health and Care plans
• Preparing for adulthood
• The local offer explained
• Changing from the old system to the new - how will it happen?
They can be downloaded from our website at www.cafamily.org.uk/the-sen-process
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