News for forums

Here you’ll find all the latest news and updates for parent carer forums. You might also find it useful to visit our upcoming learning events page and our resources for forums page.

In this article

Parent Carer Participation Annual Review 2023-2024

Please read our latest Parent Carer Participation Annual Review, which brings together activities, experiences and insights from parent carer forums throughout 2023-2024.

Contact & NNPCF Joint in-person Conference.

The Contact & NNPCF Joint in-person Conference took place on Tuesday 4th February 2025 at the Mercure Northampton. This event was really well attended and we are now pleased to be able to share the Highlights film from the day along with presentations from the Conference. These can be viewed on the dedicated conference page.

NNPCF & Contact Virtual Conference – recordings now available

The Contact and NNPCF’s Joint Virtual Conference took place on Wednesday 20th November 2024 and recorded sessions are now available to view on our Dedicated Conference Page https://contact.org.uk/contact-nnpcf-conference-2024-25/

As ever if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us at [email protected].

Meet Ele the new digital wellbeing platform

We’re pleased to introduce you to Ele, the new digital wellbeing platform delivered by CiC, our wellbeing and forum support provider.

Ele is the new one-stop shop for elevating your health and wellbeing. With thousands of videos and resources covering a range of different topics, Ele provides easily accessible personalised support 24/7.

Here’s what Ele has to offer:

To learn more about Ele, please contact your Parent Carer Participation Adviser.

We’re excited for you to meet Ele and start exploring all the support and resources available to you and following an Online Learning Session, a recording of the session along with any relevant documents will be made available after the session on our Resource Pages.

Parent Participation Matters!

Throughout February 2024 we shone a spotlight on the incredible work PCF members are doing across England – sometimes in the face of enormous challenges, diving into real life examples of the positive impact forums are having and the genuine difference they are making to children and young people with SEND and their families.

Keep an eye on Contact’s main news, parent participation success stories, Contact’s social media and make sure you are signed up to the NNPCF and Contact Participation newsletter to stay updated.

Thank you to all the PCFs sharing their stories with us.

Summary Diversity and Inclusion Toolkit

Last year we produced a Diversity & Inclusion toolkit for forums to support them to be welcoming and inclusive to all families. We have a produced a short, summary version of the toolkit to help forums including those just starting out, to plan inclusive and accessible events and meetings to help build their membership and to be as representative as possible.

Use the summary toolkit on its own or alongside the full toolkit to support your forum’s outreach to all communities.

Please let us know about your forum’s successes engaging underrepresented families, via your adviser or by emailing [email protected].

Parent carer forum Diversity & Inclusion toolkit

All parent carer forums aspire to be inclusive and representative of the families in their areas so that they can effectively represent all parent carers’ voices.

Following on from our conference sessions on the Diversity and Inclusion toolkit and developing an Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion policy, we are pleased to be able to share:

We have developed some template Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion policies for parent carer forums to adapt for their own use:

These templates are to help parent carer forums to develop policies which are right for them at their stage of development.  Individual forums will need to ensure that the policy meets their needs and enables them to develop a fully inclusive culture.

To learn more about reaching out into your local community with confidence and eloquence, watch the recording of the official launch which took place at our recent virtual conference.

Parent carer participation annual review 2022/23

Read our latest Parent carer participation annual review for 2022/2023. Read how we supported parent carer forums and the impact that forums had locally in 2022/2023.

Contact and NNPCF parent carer participation newsletter (England)

Contact and the National Network of Parent Carer Forums (NNPCF) produce a joint parent carer participation newsletter.

Download past versions of the newsletter:

This newsletter contains key information about the development of parent carer participation, information about important changes across health services, special education and social care in England, news for local forums, the latest news from the NNPCF and opportunities for forums to participate. Sign up for the parent carer participation joint newsletter.