In this article
Introduction
All parent carer forums receive a grant from the Department for Education (DfE) to enhance and develop parent carer participation in their local area. This public funding provides forums with a recognised and trusted status as the independent, parent carer led organisation representing parent carers collective experiences. This grant enables parent carer forums participation work and underpins their credibility with partners such as the local authority (LA), National Health Service (NHS), and with government through membership of the National Network of Parent Carer Forums (NNPCF).
Due to the nature of their role, and the DfE grant, parent carer forums have some specific considerations when it comes to additional funding:
- Maintaining independence – Forums are independent organisations. Any forum needs to be able to make decisions for itself, in the best interests of the forum. Managing any conflicts of interest is crucial to maintaining that independence.
- Aligning with the forum’s participation purpose – Any additional funding should support, not distract from, the forum’s role developing parent carer participation in the area.
- Complying with the grant conditions – DfE funds must remain clearly identifiable and used only for activities set out in your grant application (unless agreed with your Contact Adviser). Any other funded activity must not put the forum in a position where they can’t meet the conditions of the DfE grant, HM code for grant recipients, and Memorandum of Understanding agreed with the local authority as part of the grant application process.
- Reputation and trust – Forums rely heavily on developing constructive trusting relationships with their parent carer community and strategic partners such as the local authority and health. Any decisions about funding must take this into account to ensure the forum can maintain it’s relationships and work constructively
Receiving the DfE grant what does it really mean?
Top Tip
Keep funding streams separate in your accounts to ensure payments are allocated correctly.
Before applying for funding
The structure of a forum can have implications on funding and fundraising.
- It can be harder to raise other funds if you’re a hosted forum as you are not a legal entity.
- Your host may or may not be willing to hold any other funds on your behalf so always talk to your host organisation before applying for additional funding.
- There could also be issues if both your group and the host organisation apply to the same funder, as it might create competition or confusion about who the funder should support.
- Some charitable trusts won’t give money to organisations who aren’t a registered charity in their own right – so check the details carefully of any potential grant givers and who they will give money to.
Read more about hosting.
Some trusts will give to small community groups that aren’t incorporated as a charity or CIC and some don’t. Talk to your local voluntary sector organisation who will have details locally and check details of any trusts to see who they will and won’t fund.
Read more about unincorporated associations.
- If you are a CIC you will pay 20% tax on any year end surplus from everything except “tin rattling” (any small scale, face-to-face fundraising using collection tins or buckets).
- Some grants/funding streams will not be available to CICs, you will need to read the eligibility criteria carefully to see if you can apply for certain funding.
Read more about CICs.
There are many grant funding opportunities available for Charities.
The charity commission has specific rules around fundraising:
As a charity you will also need to check if your fundraising activities could also be considered as trading:
- Impact on total income – does it take you over the Value Added Tax (VAT) threshold?
- VAT is a complex issue contracts may be vatable if it exceeds the VAT threshold. Current threshold is £90,000. Read more about How VAT works
- If you think you will exceed this from earned income/ contracts get a ruling from Customs and Excise
- Will you have to charge vat on your services? If you have to register for VAT you will need to charge an additional 20% VAT on all contracts or sales
- Will you have to pay tax on the income or profit? If you are a CIC you will pay 20% tax on any year end surplus from everything except “tin rattling” (any small scale, face-to-face fundraising using collection tins or buckets)
- Is the work in line with your forum values, aims and objectives? Applying for restricted funding or project work could lead people to focus more on getting individual projects funded and delivered, rather than working together towards the group’s overall mission and long-term goals.
- Have you got capacity to take on new work?
- Is the work based on full costs recovery – Have you factored in all the costs of running the project?This could include infrastructure or project management costs or adding VAT on any equipment you are buying for the project, if applicable.
- If you take on new staff do you have enough reserves to cover redundancy payments (where applicable) at the end of the project or if you have to close? – you cannot use the DfE grant for redundancy payments
- Does the contract compromise your independence as a forum in any way? Especially contracts with local authorities or other local area partners.
Key terms: Restricted and unrestricted funding
Restricted funds – Is usually the money you receive from grants. You can only spend the money on the work outlined in the grant application. If you don’t spend all the funds, you would usually have to return the remainder to the funder. Restricted funding can also apply if you have raised funds for a specific cause or project.
Unrestricted funding – This type of income usually comes from selling services or doing specific activities. The forum can spend it on anything it needs. Contracts and service level agreements (SLAs) fall into this category, as long as the forum delivers the agreed activities. If the forum completes all the contracted work and still has money left over, it can use the remaining funds as it chooses. Unrestricted funding can also come from your own fundraising activities.
Funding from strategic partners (this could be from Local Authorities (LA), Health or other local services)
Forums have a unique role in representing parent carers in local strategic decision making, and they do this by working in partnership with local authorities, health, education and other partners. This role and the expectations that services will work together with parent carer forums, are set out in the SEND code of practice. Forums are valued by their partners because they provide the collective voice of parent carers with children and young people with SEND in their area, helping them to understand the lived experience and work together to develop and improve services.
As of 2025, 58% of forums receive additional funding from their LA or integrated care board (ICB) for parent carer participation. Part of how any service can show value for lived experience through their forum is by providing funding. Areas that are developing their joint working and participation well, tend to provide additional funding for their parent carer forum.
Contact and the NNPCF are currently exploring approaches and agreements between forums, ICBs, LAs and other partners to providing local funding for forums with an aim of supporting more forums and their strategic partners to find models that work for them. If you have an example you feel works for you please tell us at [email protected]
Project Grants
This is a common form of funding where a public sector authority provides a grant for a specific project or initiative. A grant agreement restricts the forum’s use of the funds to the outlined activities. If you don’t spend all of the grant money, the funder usually expects you to return the underspend.
Contracts and Service Delivery Agreements
Commissioning of Public Services: Public sector authorities often “commission” or hire charities or CICs to deliver public services on their behalf. This is a form of earned income for the charity or CICs and a contract usually governs it. Examples include providing social care, running children’s services, or managing mental health programs.
Contracts will often have penalties for non-delivery, but you should have permission to keep any underspend.
Local Authorities should have a process to monitor the delivery of contracts – usually through regular contract monitoring meetings and have set out a series of Key performance indicators – or KPI’s for forums to meet.
Competitive Tendering: Charities often have to compete with other charities and private businesses to win these contracts through a competitive tendering process.
Tenders
Ideally, tendering wouldn’t happen because it can make groups compete instead of collaborate. However, we need to understand that Local Areas have the right to follow their agreed commissioning and procurement processes when devolving funding to participation to parent carers forums.
Key Principles to discuss with your LA if needed:
- Parent carers and statutory partners should always co-agree to go to tender.
- Local authorities cannot include the DfE funded element of a forums work into any tender, such as being the lead partner to represent the views of parent carers.
If the LA co-design it, they could include support for parent carer forums in a tender
The LA cannot include any DfE grant funding in any contract. Anyone creating a tender that might affect an existing forum or parent carer participation must co-produce it with parent carers from the beginning. - Parent carers must have equal say in the decision making process if a tender affects them
- Any tender involving the support or delivery of parent carer participation must include performance measures that ensure parent participation is being parent led
How to establish independence when receiving funding
- Some forums have a clause in their contract, Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) or terms of reference with the LA that states the independence of their role in ensuring they represent the views of parent carers.
- The DFE grant MOU section demonstrates forums independence from the local authority: Parent Carer Forums and the local authority each sign an annual Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which underpins working together. The key principles are: Co-production, Independence of the forum, Respect and Honesty
- Include a statement in any contract outlining how the forum will maintain their independence from the LA to ensure they act as a critical friend and represent the views of their parent carer community.
- Have a section in any contract to outline the forums independence and how you will manage any disagreements with the LA.
- Publicise the issues you have shared with the Local authority and any solutions you’ve worked on together. For example ‘You said, we did’
Tips for asking for funding
- If you haven’t had any funding from your local authority before – have a conversation with your SEND lead before you start and think about the data you can give them to show what you’re doing now, what you could achieve with other funding and think carefully about how much you ask for in the first instance. Some forums have started with very small grants of £1000 to £2000 and built up slowly – proving what they can achieve and how they can support the LA to meet their objectives.
- Look at the local authorities SEND strategy – what are they aiming to achieve and how can you help them to do this?
- More information about preparing for bids and proposals will be in the next session with Lucy Smith (January 2026).
- You can also talk to forums in your own region to see how much money they get from their LA and what they have to achieve for this.
- Think about the information you already have about your membership, your reach through other organisations, hits on your website and data about which pages people visit etc. how you collect and collate feedback from families and if you have any reports you can share with your LA to show your value
Watch: Fundraising for forums
Other sources of funding
For other sources of funding including how to find grants or trusts to apply for, local fundraising through events and using Artificial intelligence (AI) for applications visit other sources of funding .
Last Updated: June 2026
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Looking for something else? You can find a full list of pages on our Parent carer forum handbook contents page.
Find out more
Community Matters
Community Matters can offer forums support on governance, legal structures, handling complaints and paying people.
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Working in partnership
Working in partnership, including with health services, local authorities and other groups.
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Contact Parent Carer Participation Advisers
Parent Carer Participation Adviser's support the forum and provide a sounding board for the forum leadership. Find your forum's named adviser here.
Read more
National Network of Parent Carer Forums (NNPCF)
In this section, we look at the role of the NNPCF that all forums are a member of.
Read more
HM Code of Conduct
Download information about the HM code of conduct for grant holders