Roles and responsibilities 

Information to support forums with the development of its roles and responsibilities.

Every forum is unique and the roles within them may be different. Forums will want to consider how they can share their workload to ensure a range of parent carers can be involved. Spreading the workload will also help to ensure that forums limit the risk of burnout to individuals within the forum. 

It is helpful for forums to be clear about the roles and responsibilities of active members. This can help to ensure people feel valued and help to avoid confusion as to who is doing what, which can lead to internal conflict. 

Identifying roles in a forum 

TOP TIP

It’s helpful to look at the kinds of work currently being done and make a list of this. The steering group could do this together, using post it notes for each area of work or task. You can then start to group the post it notes to make different roles.

The kinds of work done by forums includes: 

Please note that this list is not a full list so it’s important that forums look at the work currently happening and identify work the forum may want to do in the future.  When designing roles, the forum may need to consider if a volunteer can reasonably carry out the role, or if it should be a paid role. Forums will want to consider the handbook page “paying people” when doing this. 

Leadership roles  

Depending on the forums  legal structure, the people that run the forum may have different role titles, for example trustee, director, committee member or steering group member.  Whatever their title, these are usually the people responsible for ensuring the forum meets all its responsibilities and runs effectively.  

Trustee

The role of a trustee is to have overall control and responsibility for a charity.  Trustees are usually unpaid (although there are some limited exceptions to this) and must work in the best interests of the charity.  It is important that charity trustees are aware of their responsibilities under charity law, and you can read more about the trustee role through the Charity Commissions guidance.  

Director

Directors of community interest companies have a number of duties under the Companies Act 2006, and this includes running the forum in a way that satisfies the ‘community interest test.’   The Companies Interest companies guidance provides information on the requirements for directors.

Steering group or committee members

Steering group or committee members often are the group of parent carers who lead the forum when it is an unincorporated organisation/group. Within a steering group you may also have a chair, secretary and treasurer. 

Forum Chair – This role includes chairing meetings, encourage discussion and support the group to make decisions. This role is designed not to take on main responsibility and decision making. It is important work is shared out so that the chair does not burn out. You could think about having Co Chairs rather than a stand alone chair

Vice Chair – This role supports the chair and is able to step in if the chair is unavailable.

Secretary – This role will take brief notes of what was agreed at meetings and who is responsible for doing the agreed tasks

Treasurer/finance lead – This role supports with applying for the DFE participation grant and oversee the keeping of finance records  

See our online learning sessions on the role of the treasurer and other roles in the forum.

Parent carer representatives 

Forums will want to nominate parent carer representatives to sit on local authority and  health service strategic boards, committees, or task and finish groups so that parents’ voices are heard and acted upon when decisions are being made about services affecting their children. It is important that parent carer representatives are able to feed in not only their own experiences and views but also those of others, even if they personally do not agree with them.  

You will want to make sure parent carer representatives report back to you about their work.  Some forums find it helpful to have a minimum of two parents on a steering group. This has the following advantages: 

Some forums are structured so that all parent carer representatives are also members of the forum steering group but this is not always the case. It is important to have processes in place if you have parent carer representatives who sit on committees but are not members of the steering group. Make sure they have someone on the forum they can contact if they begin to find this work difficult or if they have any questions.  

We run a parent rep training course annually, contact your Contact adviser for more information or visit our training pages.

Video: Being a parent rep

Support for the different roles in the forum 

Forums may wish to arrange an induction for all parent carer representatives or those in a leadership role. This means they will know what is required of them, agree to the code of conduct, and understand the support available to them when carrying out their role.  

It may be useful to draw up role descriptions and or have a ‘parent carer reps’ agreement. Arrange for any new parent carer taking up a representative or leadership role to go through the induction and provide a mentor if necessary until they are confident in carrying out the role on their own. 

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.