Leading your forum through change

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 goes back to work and no longer has time to be actively involved in the forum
• a parent’s child moves into adult services and is no longer in the 0-25 category
• parents find that being involved is too heavy a commitment on their time
• a family moves to another local authority area
• You may state how long someone can be an active member of the forum in your policies

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).

Avoid ‘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 in to 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 is made up of 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”.

How to avoid ‘founder syndrome’:

• 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 officer roles on the committee can be held by the same person.

Plan for succession

As part of your forum health check ask everyone:

• how they are finding their roles
• if they are happy with their work, and
• if they have any plans they might have for the future, which might affect their ability to take part in forum work.

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. It might be good to do a skills audit of your active members.

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. You may think about having members shadow or co chair certain areas so that they can learn the role before taking over. This does not always work as people sometimes leave suddenly. This is why it is sensible to have well-trained parent carers who are able to fulfil a variety of roles until new members can be recruited.

If you need support you can ask you Contact adviser.

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.

Forum health check

Find out how to carry out a forum health check

Forum Health check 

Policies and procedures

Find examples and downloadable templates here

Policies and Procedures 

Contact associates

Find out more about the associate programme

Contact Associates

Saying yes (and no): choosing where to focus your forum's energy

Find out how to prioritise and build capacity in the forum

Find out more

Contact adviser

Find your named adviser here

Parent Carer Participation Adviser

Contact's training offer

Find out more about training for forums

Contact’s Training Offer