Brent Parent Carers Forum CIC

As part of our Brent SEND Strategy, we are working with Brent Local SEND Partnership which consists of Education, Social Care, and Health services to ensure what you tell us about your ‘lived experiences’ are fed back on a regular basics.

STARR service

What parents said – ‘It would be good for STAR to attend school meetings with us’
What STAR has done – Claire can attend meetings in school for CYP who have an EHCP or are under a  CP/CIN plan (where necessary).

What parents said – ‘What happens if, your CYP is not on the SOCA/ NDT waiting list, what help do we get?

What STAR has done – All families who live in Brent can attend STAR drop-ins at the 8 Family Wellbeing Centres. Families just need to register with Brent Family Wellbeing Centres, STAR can support with this on arrival.

Early Years

The Early Years Inclusion support team complete an annual survey and parents’/carers contributions to this from each year help to shape the service.
Parent voice was strong around providing earlier transition support and therefore we prioritised this earlier this year from April 2023 onwards.

Starting Big School workshop was held twice in the Summer Term 2023 and well attended with positive feedback.  We are already planning the date for the 2024 sessions.

The Early Years bulletin that goes around to all EY providers fortnightly now includes a regular section for Brent Parent/Carer Forum updates so that all parent support opportunities are shared, and settings encouraged to highlight this to parents/carers in their settings.

There was an EY SENCO presentation on the Brent Parent Carer forum and opportunities for parent/carer support held for EY SENCOs in July 2023.

Feedback has indicated that the numbers of parents/carers of EY children joining the BPCF is growing, and we continue to support this by publicising events in order to support the voice of this parent/carer group.

Brent Local Partnership is working together with BPCF to develop more opportunities to consulting with and co-producing services with parents and young people.

You told us ?

Different practitioners  were telling us different things about SEND support and EHC Needs Assessments .

We have or are doing

Brent SEND Service produced a booklet for people working with Child and Young People and
parents/carers  to support understanding.

We have also trained  SEND Navigators in Family Wellbeing Centres and SEND champions across education, health and care to provide single points of information for practitioners.

We have also ensured that our training programme is repeated so that new SEND practitioners are kept up to date with any developments in SEND practice.

You told us?

We are unclear of the EHC Needs Assessment, Annual Review process, SEND Support,moving schoo

We have or are doing:

We have working with Brent SEND Inclusion Service to produce a training programme for parents to help provide information on the different elements parents have asked for. There are also placement and transition booklets to support parents/carers to take important decisions with their children/young people. We have also updated our EHC assessment Process guidance, bringing together all the different elements into one helpful guide – available on the Local Offer .

You told us?

Letters for the EHC Needs Assessment was not clear and you could not understand what was happening.

We have or are doing:

We have reviewed all letters issued as part of the EHC Needs Assessment with Brent SEND 0-25 Team, the Brent Parent Carer Forum and SENDAIS and letters were amended to a more parent friendly style.