It is inevitable that at some point in time, parent carers involved in the running of the forum will leave. This can be for many reasons, including:
- A parent carer needs to spend more time with their child or family if they are going through a difficult patch.
- Their personal circumstances change.
- A parent carer no longer has time to be actively involved in the forum due to going back to work.
- A parent’s child moves into adult services (post 25).
- Parents find that being involved is too heavy a commitment on their time.
- A family moves to another local authority area.
It is therefore important to:
- Prioritise and spread the forum’s workload so that parents do not get burnt out and leave.
- Make sure parent carers know that their work is appreciated, and feel that their time is usefully spent.
- Avoid becoming dependant on one or two parents. Be continually recruiting and up-skilling new parents, and plan for succession (who will take over when parents leave).
Check people are okay
Do not to take it for granted that people are happy with the role they have been asked to carry out. Take the time to check how people are finding the work, this could take a form similar to an appraisal for staff.
Give everyone the opportunity to talk about what is going well, and what they are finding difficult. If they are struggling, ask if they would benefit from attending a training course to increase their confidence and ability to perform a particular role.
As part of your forum health check ask everyone:
- How they are finding their roles.
- If they are happy with their work.
- If they have any plans they might have for the future, which might affect their ability to take part in forum work.
Avoiding ‘founder syndrome’
Sometimes members of forum steering groups may have a tendency to do everything themselves and appear reluctant to involve other people. This can be because they feel new people would not fit into the existing group or they would have too much to learn to get up to speed, or on a basic human level, the members of the founding group feel that they ‘own’ the forum.
This is a well-known phenomenon that happens with groups, and it is understandable. It is sometimes referred to as ‘founder syndrome’. Founder syndrome can happen to extremely talented and dedicated individuals.
Indicators of founder syndrome include:
- A founder who is at the centre of all decision-making with little input from others.
- A steering group that rarely meets, or has constant turnover, or comprises friends and family who have little input.
- An organisation in which there is little thought for succession planning (who will take over from the initial group members).
- A founder who has few other interests or projects, devoting nearly all his/her time to the organisation.
- A founder who has tried to leave, but always comes back.
- Comments such as, “I don’t know what would happen without me”.
- Building a strong steering group or management committee where everyone has a part to play.
- Planning regular reviews of the forum’s work and who does what.
- Planning some team social events to help develop the group as a team.
- Welcoming and taking up offers of help from other committee members.
- Encouraging new members of the forum to get involved in working groups to gain experience that might lead to them becoming members of the committee.
- Developing a succession plan.
- Limiting the amount of time the same person can hold an officer role on the committee.
Creating a plan
Initially the forum may want to review its structure and identify key roles which pose a potential risk if the individual was to leave and focus on these. A forum can then identify potential individuals who would be able to step into the role, maybe on a temporary basis.
The forum may also want to have a formal process which outline how they manage someone leaving the forum.
This could include:
- The process to return of equipment, keys and ID.
- Access to forum systems for example membership list or emails.
- The hand over period for work and the process.
Conduct a skills audit
Sometimes people leave suddenly, so it is sensible to have well-trained parent carers who are able to fulfil a variety of roles until new members can be recruited. It is always useful to ‘up-skill’ other members of the steering group or wider forum, so they are prepared to take over a role in the event of another parent having to leave or being temporarily absent.
It is not unusual to find parent carers have a range of skills which they would be willing to use to support the forums work. Forums can conduct a simple skill audit which will help them identify any strengths and gaps they may collectively have. This can help the forum identify roles they need to recruit to or training which members may be willing to undertake.
Mentoring
If you are aware that a member is going to leave the forum, ask them to mentor another parent so that they can learn about the role from the experienced parent ahead of their departure.
Mentoring describes a relationship in which a more experienced active forum member shares their knowledge to support the development of another member. It provides opportunities to ask question about, listen, observe and clarify the role. Mentoring can help the individual who is going to take on the role, gain the confidence and experience to do so successfully. It can also support the smooth transition of a role.
Further sources of information for forums
Forums may find it useful to review the following pages within the handbook:
See our online learning session about Succession planning and handovers.
Succession planning – The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development have developed this useful factsheet to help organisations.
