Your Parent Carer Forum
WORKING TOGETHER FOR POSITIVE CHANGE
We are the local parent carer forum for families to give their views and experiences of their child’s SEND journey.
Our job is to:
Listen to and collate feedback from families
Represent the collective voice of our parent carer community in strategic meetings locally, regionally and nationally
Help shape services used by children and young people with SEND.
Our co-production work
We have a specially dedicated team, called Parent Voice, who gather the views and lived experiences (anonymously) of parent carers in our community through surveys, listening events and engagement sessions.
Our Parent Voice Team then feed this information back in meetings across the Voluntary, Education, Health and Social Care sectors, working collaboratively with service providers to highlight what is working well, challenge where changes or improvements can be made, and problem solve together.
In the last year alone our Parent Voice team and our volunteer Parent Representatives attended more than 300 meetings, including those as part of our project work, in an effort to help shape, influence and design the way that services evolve, to ensure they meet the needs of children and young people with SEND and their families in South Gloucestershire.
This way of working co-productively ensures that the needs of children and young people with SEND are being considered in the design of services right from the start.
“Working co-productively to shape services is how we can help enable children and young people to reach their full potential in every way possible.”
Take a look at the projects we’re working on here
Have your say!
We want to enable everyone to have their say on local services, family needs and topical issues. Your voice is so important – it can bring about change to local services which work for children and young people with SEND and their families.
We want to hear your views and experiences of your child’s SEND journey. Tell us what needs changing and what is working well. You can do this by:
Completing one of our SEND themed surveys (we usually produce two or three every year). These are emailed out to those on our member’s mailing list as well as posted on our social media channels.
Taking part in one of our listening events or engagement sessions – dates are listed below and information will go out in emails to those on our member’s mailing list.
Upcoming dates
How to book?
All bookable events need to be booked in advance through Eventbrite.
For events that are held via Zoom, you will receive instructions on how to join in an email from Eventbrite once you have signed up.
“We believe that the people who use a service are those best placed to help design it, review it and improve it.”
Positive outcomes
The information gathered from our surveys, listening events and engagement sessions helps to inform service providers of the challenges being faced within our SEND community and has already helped shape many of the priorities and projects that we’re working on at SGPC. And of course, we also use this information to tailor our own support sessions and workshops, based on what families are telling us they need.
By joining our community and signing up to our member’s mailing list, you’ll be the first to know the outcomes of our surveys and see first-hand the changes brought about because of your input.
“Our Parent Voice team is committed to hearing the voices of our SEND community and making sure that these are heard by the people who can bring about real and positive change for our families. Our aim to make sure that services are developed in a co-productive way with the voices of our families at the heart.”
