Setting up a steering group

How to set up a ‘steering group’ to get things up and running in a forum, including practical information about setting up forum contact details

Getting parents involved

The first step is to get other parents to work with you and set up a ‘steering group’ to get things up and running.

You might find it helpful to approach groups already in your local area to see if they have people interested in working with you. This includes local parent support groups, carers centres and the SEND Independent Advice and Support Service (SENDIAS).

If there has been a forum previously, it might be useful to link with parent carers previously involved. You may also want to ask local schools if they run parent groups.

Roles and ways of working

It is important that you start sharing tasks among each other right from the beginning. This avoids the situation where one or two people are having to do most of the work.

It will help to find out each other’s skills so you can allocate tasks in a way that makes best use of people’s strengths. To help you with this process, you can download a skills audit template.

At this stage, you may find it helpful to nominate someone to in specific roles this could include:

A Chair – to chair meetings, encourage discussion and support the group to make decisions. You could also decide to have Co Chairs to share the workload
A Vice chair – to step in when the chair cannot be present
A Secretary – to take brief notes of what was agreed at meetings and who is responsible for doing the agreed tasks
A Treasurer/finance lead – to support with applying for the DFE participation grant and oversee the keeping of finance records.

Useful online learning sessions

Role of the Treasurer in Parent Carer Forums Webinar recording

Roles and responsibilities of the chair, secretary and other forum committee members

While you’re working to establish the forum, it’s good to outline how the steering group will work and record this. Things you may want to include:

Who will be in the steering group.
How to join/leave the steering group.
How often you will meet.
How you will meet (online/virtual).
How decisions will be made – voting rights, what % is required for a decision to pass.

You can download a terms of reference template, which you may find helpful.

Planning how the steering group will work with parent carers in your area

As a steering group, you’ll want to plan how to engage with as wide a range of parent carers as possible. This step requires careful thought to make sure it will work for your local area. Every forum is different, so it’s important to consider the make-up of your area. This includes the geographical area you cover, any existing parent groups that you could link in with, and the needs of local families.

If your local authority covers a very small area, it may be relatively easy to organise meetings and events that most parents can attend. You might decide to hold monthly, half-termly or termly meetings of the forum that last a couple of hours. However, if your local authority covers a large county area, this is not going to be practical. You might instead want to invite parents from existing parent groups across the county to attend a meeting. That way they can feed in their members’ experiences to the forum.

Some forums may prefer to hold one or two large events per year and invite all of their members. The events provide an opportunity for parents to say what issues they want the forum to prioritise over the coming months. They also enable the forum to feedback any progress and changes that have arisen as a result of the forum’s involvement, to the wider parent group.

With advances in technology and social media, many forums are now putting these to good use to communicate with parent carers. Examples of this include online meetings and events.

Forum contact details

When you first start a forum you should think about how people are going to contact you. If a forum starts or develops with a Contact-held grant, there will likely be a Contact associate in place as the main point of contact.

Initially you may use your personal contact details to start the group. We recommend that you get forum specific contact details as soon as possible.

Reasons why you shouldn’t use your personal contact details for forum work:

Wellbeing

Running a forum or being parent rep can be very time consuming and require contact with a lot of different groups as well as strategic partners. It’s important for forum members to protect their mental health and wellbeing.

Having a forum specific contact (phone/email) can help with:

forum-homelife Balance: Using separate contact details helps you manage your work-life balance more effectively, preventing forum-related issues from spilling into your personal life. Putting limits on how and when you will check your emails or phone will allow you to have down time from the forum, particularly at times when your family needs your attention.
Overwhelming Communication: You might find yourself overwhelmed with the volume of communication, making it difficult to manage and respond effectively. This can affect your productivity and well-being. It can be hard to manage and sort emails if they are all coming to the same email address.

Safety

It is not advisable to use your home address for forum work. The same goes for your personal contact details like email address and phone number.

Having a forum specific contact (phone/email) can help with:

Privacy: Sharing personal contact details can expose you to unwanted communication, it could also give people access to your personal social media accounts if your email is your full name or linked to your social media handle.
Unwanted Communication: Sharing your personal contact details can lead to receiving unsolicited calls, messages, or emails from individuals you may not know or want to interact with. This can be disruptive and time-consuming.

GDPR and privacy

Forums have a duty to manage data effectively and in line with GDPR and privacy as part of the conditions of the DfE grant.

Having a forum specific contact (phone/email) can help with:

Data Protection Obligations: Your personal email may not be subject to the same policies and procedures as an organisational email address. Information may come into your personal account that should not be stored there for GDPR reasons.
Consent and Transparency: GDPR mandates that individuals must be informed about how their data will be used. They must give explicit consent. This could cause a problem for you if someone shares your personal contact details without your consent. It could also cause problems for the forum if you are storing other people’s data on your personal account.

Other considerations

Consistency: Using a dedicated contact method for forum work ensures consistent communication from a single source and easier management of group activities as people will know who and where the information is coming from. It can be hard to change emails if you have been operating on personal emails for some time.
Access to information: if a forum member leaves the forum, you could lose the information saved in their emails.
Professional Boundaries: Keeping personal and professional contacts separate helps maintain clear boundaries and professionalism.
Expenses claims: When a person working for the forum claims out-of-pocket expenses for using their personal phone for work, determining the exact amount to claim can be more time-consuming

What methods can you use to avoid using your personal details for forum work:

When meeting in person: If you are having group meetings you could use a local café or community centre. Some forums do group walks. If you are going to be working by yourself at forum events you should consider having a Lone working policy and doing a risk assessment. See the policies and procedures page
Give active forum members dedicated Email Addresses: Create separate email addresses specifically for forum communications. You could a free email provider like, gmail or outlook.
Use other technology: If you are sending newsletters or group communications you can use a database system or a mailing system like Mailchimp or SurveyMonkey.
Social Media Pages: Set up a Facebook page, X account, or Instagram profile for the group. – ensure you have good ground rules and look at our social media pages.
Virtual Phone Number: Get a virtual phone number for making calls and texts without revealing your personal number.
Get a forum phone and with a sim card or plan: Depending on the work they do, you could provide certain forum members with a phone. This will also help with clarity around expenses claims.
For further information look at: communication and gathering parent voice page.

Updated March 2026

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Find out more about setting up a forum

Roles and responsibilities

Information to support forums with the development of its roles and responsibilities. Including example job descriptions and videos about different forum roles.