What is a Parent Carer Forum?

Working together to make services better

  • Parent carer participation means parents and professionals working together. Parent carers know what life is really like when raising a child or young person with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and professionals know how services are run.
  • Recognising and sharing each other’s expert knowledge, helps service providers in the local area to make services the best they can be for children and young people with SEND (from birth to 25) and their families
  • The core role of a Parent Carer Forum is to support parent carer participation.  Parent Carer Forums gather the views of local families, from all communities, so that they are representative of their local population. They work in partnership with local authorities, education settings, health and social care providers and other local organisations to ensure that the challenges families face are heard and understood, so that together, positive changes can be made.
Parent Carer Forums work with parents to improve services for SEND families.
Find out more about Parent Carer Participation at Contact.org

Co-production

A key part of parent carer participation is working together through co-production.

Co-production is when parents and carers work together as equals with professionals to make decisions about services. It means parent carer forums are fully involved in planning, developing, running, and reviewing the support that families and children receive.

When parents and professionals share ideas and make decisions side by side, time and money are used more wisely. Most importantly, it helps create better support and better outcomes for disabled children and their families.