[Closed] February Open forum meeting: notes  

Capture of WPCF Open forum meeting - Ashland House Ince, Wigan.

WEDNESDAY 27th February 9:30 -12:00

Wigan Parent Carer Forum meeting - open to ALL Parent carers of children/young people with Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities aged 0-25 in Wigan Borough.

HAVE YOUR SAY on the future of SEND services in Wigan. Come along to input your voice, so this can be shared within the workstreams deciding changes to SEND services in Wigan.

Agenda

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09:30 - Welcome and Introductions

09:45 - Updates on SEND transformation

10:15 - Focus on Support for Families

10:45 - Focus on Parent Participation

11:00 - Forum updates

11:15 - Developing Special School Provision Consultation

11:45 - Round up and questions

12:00 - Close

SEND Transformation Update:

There were brief updates today (due to the focus being on the capturing of parent carer views)

on support for families, Local Offer and Transition workstreams. (KM/LF)

No current update for Neurodevelopmental Pathway due to previous meeting times being inaccessible to parent carers so unable to attend. However Becky Johnson (CAMHS) had attended previous open forum meeting and gave an update.

LJA  updated the group with an explanation of the SEND Transformation strands and how parent carer forum representatives sit on meetings in the different strands which are:

Integrated services

Increasing inclusion

Improving provision

Support for families

Preparing for adulthood  

Today's open forum was focusing on the “support for families” strand and all information gathered would feed into that workstream and to the SEND Partnership Board where parent carer representatives sit. RB questioned how much decision making power do the SEND Partnership Board have and whether the parent carer forum representatives are part of the decision making. LJA explained the structure was still under development but no parent carer reps currently sat anywhere beyond the SEND Partnership Board and would take this back to the SEND Partnership Board for some clarity expressing how parents felt the need to be represented and also part of the decision making process.

Focus on support for families

Families had been made aware the contract from the Local Authority for “Parent Support” in Embrace was coming to an end in March and the future of this was uncertain. LJA informed parents the forum had contacted the Local Authority, as requested in the previous open forum meeting, asking for an official answer and clarity as to how parents would be supported from March but initially received no response. However this response was received from Clare Todd (SEND Lead):

“ the Parent Support strand delivered by Embrace will continue, this will only change following feedback from the consultation you are conducting with families and any feedback from the SEND transformation Support for Parents working group.

The Early years KW is also being continued until we have a better understanding of this work.“

So the purpose of today was to capture how parent carers would like to be supported moving forward.

We split into 5 groups and discussed how we want support to look for our families.

What do you need as a family to support you?

Focus on Parent Participation

As above we discussed how the same “Parent Support” contract also included the Parent Participation Coordinator, this post currently not filled but with support from Embrace for the forum until March. There are no plans from Embrace to fill the post with only a month to go on the contract and there are no plans currently to continue this contract.

Again we split into 5 groups to ask:

What should parent participation look like - how do you want to have your voice heard?:

Forum updates

We discussed:

Structure of the forum

Chair - Lisa Aldred

Vice Chair - Leanne Flaherty

Engagement Team - Sarah Marsh, Kirstin Hart, Beth Prosser, Kelly Mc Clarence (4 others to be confirmed in Mays open meetin)

Volunteers - (open to all)

Members - all those registered with the forum.

All parent carers of children/young people aged 0-25 with SEND in Wigan can register as members of the forum.

Once someone has volunteered consistently for over 6 months at coffee mornings, stay and plays or other designated forum work they can apply to be part of the Engagement Team.

There are requirements to be part of the engagement team and the intention is that this team remains small whilst being representative of different disabilities/ages/groups.

The engagement team, chair and vice chair will discuss and decide all applications.

The forum is currently a constituted group, the official Parent Carer Forum for Wigan Borough.

The purpose of the forum is to be the voice of parent carers in Wigan on strategic groups, working in partnership with Education, Health and Social Care and other services ensuring services meet the needs of those that use them.

It was explained how previously the forum had been supported by a Parent Participation Coordinator (PPC), funded by the Local authority employed by Embrace Wigan and Leigh.

There is currently no-one in post and the contract for this post comes to an end at the end of March.

From March there will be no PPC whilst SEND Transformation process will consult with parent carers on how they want these services to look in the future.

It was explained this leaves the forum in a vulnerable position moving forward. All current work is voluntary. We receive a small grant from the Department of Education each year of £15,000 pounds. We discussed what this has been spent on this year:

MAX Cards

Data Base

Stay and Plays

Coffee Mornings

Meeting room hire

Parent Empowerment Course

Participation event

Misc (laptop/phone/resources)

SEND Newsletter (part funded by LA)

We asked what the group wanted for the coming year considering we needed to consider the reduced capacity.

To continue with the above where possible, have some evening meetings with special guests, somewhere you can take children, different days,find free rooms.

We discussed issues with the SEND Newsletter - no assurance the LA would continue to part fund it. No “black bag system” to distribute to schools. Limited capacity with no coordinator to distribute. The forum are keen to continue this great resource and will continue to look into options. We talked about the expectations parents might have and what is needed with the reality of capacity of the forum and volunteers. The current priority being to capture parent carer voice and represent this on SEND Transformation strands all other options need to be considered carefully with capacity in mind. There are plans to do some volunteer recruitment and planning for the next year within the next few months after consideration of today’s meeting.

There was much enthusiasm and ideas for future opportunities for the forum however there was a need to be realistic about capacity. Although a committed group the reality is, without a coordinator capacity is limited.  

Developing special school provision consultation.

We discussed this consultation briefly and mainly raised awareness of the need to complete the survey when you return home..

Questions and comments:

Where do children go whilst the schools change and expand?

The feel was parent carers should have more of a say on all this. - including how the buildings are set out etc

Parents and children are anxious about mainstream provision.

There is a gap for those who are too able for special school but cannot cope in mainstream.

Shape the facilities they have - make them better

Teach mainstream how to deal with special needs

..

It was explained that it is expected there will be further consultation from Wigan Council.

We could invite someone from the LA to answer some of the questions that arise.

We had been informed there will be focus groups arranged for upcoming plans.

Someone from the LA was prepared to come to this meeting to discuss this but due to the limited time we had to discuss support for families we needed to decline.

It was explained today was a start to the parent carer forum capturing parent carer views in regard to the "Support for families" workstream, there would also be surveys and views captured through other events/sessions. This information will be collated and then used by our representatives when attending SEND Transformation workstreams in order to be representative of parent carer voice in Wigan Borough. 

Corrections, views or comments welcome, please send them to participation@wiganpcf.org.uk