Getting parents involved
The first step is to get other parents to work with you and set up a ‘steering group’ to get things up and running.
You might find it helpful to approach groups already in your local area to see if they have people interested in working with you. This includes local parent support groups, carers centres and the SEND Independent Advice and Support Service (SENDIAS).
If there has been a forum previously, it might be useful to link with parent carers previously involved. You may also want to ask local schools if they run parent groups.
Roles and ways of working
It is important that you start sharing tasks among each other right from the beginning. This avoids the situation where one or two people are having to do most of the work.
It will help to find out each other’s skills so you can allocate tasks in a way that makes best use of people’s strengths. To help you with this process, you can download a skills audit template.
At this stage, you may find it helpful to nominate someone to in specific roles this could include:
- A Chair – to chair meetings, encourage discussion and support the group to make decisions. You could also decide to have Co Chairs to share the workload
- A Vice chair – to step in when the chair cannot be present
- A Secretary – to take brief notes of what was agreed at meetings and who is responsible for doing the agreed tasks
- A Treasurer/finance lead – to support with applying for the DFE participation grant and oversee the keeping of finance records.
While you’re working to establish the forum, it’s good to outline how the steering group will work and record this. Things you may want to include:
- Who will be in the steering group.
- How to join/leave the steering group.
- How often you will meet.
- How you will meet (online/virtual).
- How decisions will be made – voting rights, what % is required for a decision to pass.
You can download a terms of reference template, which you may find helpful.
Planning how the steering group will work with parent carers in your area
As a steering group, you’ll want to plan how to engage with as wide a range of parent carers as possible. This step requires careful thought to make sure it will work for your local area. Every forum is different, so it’s important to consider the make-up of your area. This includes the geographical area you cover, any existing parent groups that you could link in with, and the needs of local families.
If your local authority covers a very small area, it may be relatively easy to organise meetings and events that most parents can attend. You might decide to hold monthly, half-termly or termly meetings of the forum that last a couple of hours. However, if your local authority covers a large county area, this is not going to be practical. You might instead want to invite parents from existing parent groups across the county to attend a meeting. That way they can feed in their members’ experiences to the forum.
Some forums may prefer to hold one or two large events per year and invite all of their members. The events provide an opportunity for parents to say what issues they want the forum to prioritise over the coming months. They also enable the forum to feedback any progress and changes that have arisen as a result of the forum’s involvement, to the wider parent group.
With advances in technology and social media, many forums are now putting these to good use to communicate with parent carers. Examples of this include online meetings and events.
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.
Find out more about setting up a forum

Roles and responsibilities
Get more information about different roles and responsibilities in a forum
Roles and responsibilities
Roles and responsibilities of the chair and secretary
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Being a parent rep
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The role of a treasurer
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Building active members
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Local Support groups
Find local parent support groups
Local support groups