Forum Health check

Information for forums on taking time out to reflect on how the forum is doing and to review the forums priorities.  

Forums can often become very busy and there will be competing demands on the forums time. It can be easy to concentrate most of the time and effort on activities which the forum has prioritised and forget to keep an eye on other things that also need attention. This is why it can be helpful for the steering group to take time out to reflect on how the forum is doing and to review the forums priorities.  

Your forum could do a health check once a year, to allow the group to plan what they hope to achieve, and how they will do it, during the coming year. It can be helpful to schedule this in at the beginning of the year when the forum sets the steering group dates. 

Topics the steering group might want to consider annually: 

• Membership – retaining members/recruiting new members and targeting particular groups. 
• Marketing/communications – do parents and professionals hear about your work? 
• Influencing services – what was successful, what was not, what do you need to work on? 
• Building relationships – with key people such as service leads/managers/ commissioners/other groups and stakeholders. 
• Finance – review your budget and check that spending is in line with your planning or any grant applications. Check that you’re following the process for authorising payments. 
• Capacity – do you need to prioritise certain activities above others?  
• Compliments or complaints received and any learning from these. 
• Health and safety incidents – Reviewing any incidents should be built into the forum’s processes. It may be helpful to review these to see whether you need to make any changes to strengthen the forum’s activity or if members need any training.
• Celebrate the forums achievements
• Skills audit of active members or leadership team to see if there are any knowledge gaps.

Over time forums adapt to meet the needs of the local area, changes in steering group members or staff. Forums may want to do a more in-depth health check to ensure the forum is following the policies and procedures written down or if you need to change things. This is also a good opportunity to review the running the parent carer forum section of the handbook and think about any additional policies you may want to implement. 

Legal structure

Forums may also find it helpful to set a schedule of review with regard to their legal structure. The work forums do can extend outside of participation, with some forums running community buildings or provided services like peer support. It’s important that these changes and the forums’ legal structure align. 

Changes in legislation may mean that new structures are available compared to when a forum made the original structure choice. A different structure may now be more suitable for the forum. This could be connected to funding received or funding that the forum may want to apply for. 

If a forums wants to change legal structure, there are likely to be some limitations to consider. You can take advice from Community Matters, or another independent source.  Any decision needs to be made as transparently and openly as possible.   

Support

Forums may find it useful to do a health check with the help of a facilitator, so that all members of the forum steering group, including the Chair, are able to participate and reflect equally.  You may want to engage a Contact Associate or other independent consultant to support you with this. You can speak to your participation adviser for guidance.

Do you have any thoughts about this page? Visit our How to feedback page to share them.

Looking for something else? You can find a full list of pages on our Parent carer forum handbook contents page.

More support and resources for forums

Contact adviser

Find your named adviser here

Parent Carer Participation Adviser

Contact associates

Find out more about the associate programme

Contact Associates

Running the parent carer forum

Find out more about what you need to run a forum

Running the parent carer forum

Policies and procedures

Find examples and downloadable templates here

Policies and Procedures 

Community Matters

Find out more about support from Community Matters

Community Matters

Measuring impact with Data Orchard

Click here to watch this video on our YouTube channel

Find out more