The purpose of parent participation is to enable parents to get involved in service planning and decision making so that services meet the needs of families with SEND or disabled children. Effective parent participation happens when parents have conversations with and work alongside professionals, in order to design, develop and improve services. These conversations benefit everyone involved and allow all agencies to work together for one collective - to ensure families with children and young people who have SEND or disabilities are getting the correct level of support. 

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In order to make sure this is successful the parent participation needs to include the following:

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The right information: 

Parents need timely and relevant information to help them access the services and support they need to care for their children who have SEND or are disabled. Parent/carers often struggle to get this information and when they do can sometimes not make sense of what is available. The more informed that parents are, the more they will feel confident and able to make appropriate choices for their children and families.

 

Honesty:

Being a parent participant is a step up from simply giving information as it requires a two-way communication. Croydon Active Voices host regular forum meetings to seek parents views on how services can be improved. Once this information is collected, it is up to the parent participants to feed this back to the local authority services. Whenever a change is notified, a formal consultation is held where the changes are discussed at length. As many parents as possible should be informed about proposed changes to a service and invited to give their ideas and raise concerns about the proposals before final decisions are made.

 

Effective participation: 

Parent participants inform decision makers about the experiences of parents. They also ensure that parents’ views are fed into decisions about services at a strategic level. Through this process parents and professionals reach a common understanding about effective services for children with SEND or disabilities, young people and their families. Parent participants represent ALL families whether their children/ young people fall into the categories. As a collective, this means that families will be heard and given a voice. This is THE most important role as a parent participant.

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If this is something you are interested in please get in contact with Croydon Active Voices on our Contact Us page