Contact Website

The Contact website holds a wide range of information which can be helpful for parent carer forums.

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The Contact website holds a wide range of information which can be helpful for parent carer forums. The SEND system has lots of different parts and the website includes useful information which can help inform forums in the work they do.  Contact’s page on Campaigns and Research can support forums with their participation and co-production work, especially when they want to evidence the bigger picture outside of their local area.  

Often forums meet parents, in the course of their role, who are experiencing challenges. It can be helpful to signpost parents to the information in the Help for families section of the website. This also helps forums to understand the rights of parent carers and the support they should be able to access. 

Training and development opportunities 

Within the website forums find a range of training and development opportunities. This helps forums to grow their knowledge but also supports others to do so. The opportunities include: 

Online learning sessions 

Each year Contact organises nine online learning sessions on the topics that forums need most and includes the annual grants session. Forums can make suggestions via their adviser. 

An online learning session is a presentation live on the internet. Forums will hear presentations live, follow the slides and ask or submit questions for the presenters to answer. You will need a home computer, laptop, tablet or smart phone. It’s possible to join via telephone, although you won’t be able to see the presentation or submit questions. 

Subjects include information about key processes or projects that a forum might need to know about, such as OFSTED and CQC inspections, Partnerships for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in schools and the Social Care review. These sessions also share learning to support the forums practically in running the forum, such as Let’s get digitally inclusive or Forums reaching their communities. 

All the sessions are recorded and available for forums who cannot attend the live session via the dedicated parent carer forum YouTube channel . 

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.

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