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PODS Parent Carer Forum Update (Summer 2024)

Who?  

I’m Jayne Stevens, your Strategic Co-ordinator.  Most of you will know of my role as the lead of the PODS Parent Carer Forum, where I’m responsible for Participation and Co-Production.  We are partly funded partly through Department for Education to be the officially recognised parent carer forum for Telford & Wrekin (there are forums like this one all over the country).  I’ve held this post now for 15 years and have my own experiences across a wide range of services. 

What? 

Gathering the views, wishes, feelings and experiences of local parent carers – about the services they access, or would like to, or need to, highlighting opportunities and gaps.  

Also experiences around their needs and diagnosis, whether this be assessment, diagnosis journey, post diagnosis – we know the importance of sharing experiences and the need for support through the whole journey.  

Working closely with the wider PODS Charity team, and of course my team of Parent Reps and Champions who are out and about in the community listening and providing feedback to the forum.    

How? 

We are representing parent carers from early years, primary, secondary, young adults up to the age of 25 who have a disability, or an additional need.   

When? 

I work full time, so am available to chat and engage and link up with parent carers and wider families at a time to suit you. 

I do this in a number of ways: direct contact at events, workshops or out and about in the community, the annual survey, emails, social media, phone calls, messages, at our events and trips, and via workshops that have been run.   You can reach out to me at any time to discuss and share – your views are always welcome. 

 Why? 

Parent carers have a voice where it matters most to improve services and lead to better outcomes and life experiences of their children, young people and wider parent carers.  Taking this straight through the strategic and senior meetings where it can have the most influence overall, and at a more local and individual level with schools and services they access directly. 

Get in Touch with Jayne directly at jayne@podstelford.org or 0777 534 2092

Or share your experiences with our new 'form':

Your Experiences Matter - Have your Say (office.com)

PODS Parent Carer Forum has been involved in the following workstreams over the past few months, representing parent carer views and wishes, and supporting improved outcomes for all: 

Short Breaks 

We have been hosting the Short Breaks Forum events for parent carers to attend to share their experiences and ask questions regarding accessing short breaks – whether this be the Ican2 offer, the new passes, understanding personal budgets and how to access a PA or respite. 

Lots of discussion always happens at these forums and the short breaks newsletter has an update of all discussions. 

Alongside this forum are strategic and operational meetings with commissioners and service leads, some of this work also gives an opportunity for us to work on tenders for new suppliers of services and we’re very pleased that the experiences and wishes and wants from parent carers has led to a new service provision to meet your needs: 

"PODS Parent Carer Forum are committed to ensuring the parent carer voice is included when developing and co-producing new services within the Local Authority.  As part of the Short Breaks offer, we were pleased to be involved in the tender process for the new Arts Project that will include Creative Arts, Dance and Music sessions.  We are sure that parent carers will enjoy this exciting new offer and we look forward to hearing all about it". 

Health  

Our primary focus areas for health, are around Neurodiversity, Annual health checks and Learning Disability and wider mental health. 

We have regular meetings to cover all these areas through partnership boards and one to one meetings with key personnel to discuss neurodiversity and wider mental health.  

One of our successes from this work has been the setting up sessions for parent carers to attend a 1:1 meeting with the Assistant Psychologist from the NeuroDevelopment pathway team – We are just about to run our third date, and these will continue through the summer and into the new academic year.  

Education 

Our main focus over recent months has been the ‘Change’ programme that supports a range of ‘testing’ of Department for Education proposals.  One of these is the testing of the new EHCP template.  We’ve ran a couple of workshops already, an opportunity to feed into the proposal around Advisory Tailored Lists.  Wider areas of work include collating of local data and information, mediation processes and work areas coming up for us will be Alternative Provision opportunities and work around Ordinarily Available Provision (SEN Support). 

Challenges at Home 

It’s important to us to listen to parent carer feedback about services and a good while ago, parent carers were telling us they needed more support whilst waiting for a diagnosis, or around accessing the pathway. 

We worked with health and education teams and developed our ‘Challenges at Home’ session – that support with exactly that.  We run these sessions every month (every other month online evening too!). 

The remit of these sessions is for parent carers to discuss home/life concerns and seek information and advice from Educational Psychologist team around emotional, behaviour, social, anxieties, routines, etc. We use these sessions to support parent carers to find solutions together and share experiences and offer mutual support in a safe and supportive place. 

Meet the Directors Event  

It is important for us to give the opportunity to parent carers to have their voices heard directly by senior managers, directors and local councillors and to support this we held an evening event at PODS Hub in February, and invited senior directors and managers from social care, education, local councillors and leader of the council. 

This was very well received by all involved and we will plan to run something again in the future. 

Upcoming Projects 

We will be sharing information about the Working Together (Co-Production) Charter, our work on the PINS (working with 20 local primary schools), workshops and plans for our annual conference, our involvement in the development and monitoring of the SEND and Alternative Provision Action Plan. 

To find any more about these meetings, workshops, events, etc please get in touch jayne@podstelford.org or check out the weekly ebulletins that are shared to our members via email every Monday.

Challenges at Home Sessions

"Challenges at home" sessions for families who have a child o NeuroDiversity (Autism, ADHD, etc) assessment pathway or undergoing diagnosis.  Open to 0-18 years from mainstream and special schools

For families to discuss home/life concerns and seek information and advice from Educational Psychologist team around emotional, behaviour, social, anxieties, routines, etc.

We use these sessions to support families to find solutions together and share experiences and offer mutual support in a safe and supportive place.

Next date: 18th July:  https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/Parents-Opening-Doors-PODS/e-ggybxj

BeeU Drop in with Assistant Psychologist

As you are aware there have been some changes within the BeeU team and one of these is the recruitment of Assistant Psychologists who are offering 'waiting well' support to families on the Neurodiversity pathways (ADHD, ASD), to signpost to other services and to give an update on waiting times and review your assessment journey.   

New Dates released: 30th July and 13th August

Increased time slots are now 30 minute long and will run between 12 and 3.30pm.

https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/Parents-Opening-Doors-PODS/e-kbamjg

Please note the above material is subject to copyright, please contact PODS before sharing any of the information in this PODS Ebulletin.

Thank you for reading our latest Ebulletin, please stay safe & well. 

Kerrie Seagrave, Member Support Co-ordinator

on behalf of PODS Parent Carer Forum.

We hope you enjoyed reading our latest e-bulletin - we hope you continue to find it useful. If you have any suggestions to make it better feel free to let me know.