Greenwich Parent Carer Participation Forum

What do we do?

We bring together parents/carers of children and young adults with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), up to the age of 25 living in Royal Greenwich.

• Provide opportunities to meet with other parents and share lived experiences
• Support to access information, services and support
• Run information and consultation events
• Parent led and independent
• Official strategy voice – critical friend
• Do nothing without us – working in partnership

We have all been very busy this last school year, developing our lead areas, links with schools, local authority and our local health services. We are delighted to see an increasing number of parents joining the forum, which is now at 500. In September we will send out a forum newsletter detailing all the different ways you can become involved and to update you about all our current and future work areas.

Become a Parent Champion
Our parent champions help us represent the views of parents to service providers. By working together, we can ensure that everybody counts!

Directors and their lead areas

• Stella Abu - Lead for early intervention and parent champions coordinator PT
• Lilian Odim - SENDIASS steering group and lead for housing
• Kafayah Eletu - SENDIASS steering group and lead for strategy 
• Carol Foyle - lead for parent participation and PINS. Supporting parent champion coordinator
• Ölayide Olafuyi - lead for preparing for adulthood

New members of our team

• Kohinoor Rahman- joining us as the forum administrator. Kohinoor is also one of the Directors, leading on Neurodiversity and Mental Health & Wellbeing.
• Leanne Chalmers - new member of the management team with GPCPF, and one of the Directors. Leanne is leading on Mental Health & Wellbeing and Early Years.

Mental Health and Wellbeing
We have recently had several positive conversations with CAMHS, in particular, the Participation team about different ways to involve parents and their children and young people in the delivery of and monitoring of their services. We are very excited about some of the upcoming plans, so watch this space for more details to follow in September.

Early Years
We have also been in contact with the Early Communication Together Team and again delighted that GPCPF will be hosting a coffee morning at their stay and play session in September at Fossdene school, keep a eye out for more details coming soon

Partnership for inclusion of neurodiversity in schools (PINS)
Greenwich has been chosen to be a part of a national pilot programme led by the NHS England and DfE to increase understanding of neurodiversity in 10%of all primary schools across England.
This is a joint programme with the Council, Parent Forums, Health and schools and works with school leadership teams, parents, governing bodies and individual practitioners to create lasting change in the understanding of neurodiversity. 20 Greenwich schools were selected from over 30 and the intention is to share learning across our whole community of schools. In Greenwich we are hoping to put a spotlight on the growing needs of children and young people with ADHD.
We are leading the work with parents and schools to support, develop and strengthen engagement with Parents. We have already met with 18 of them and are developing exciting plans to involve parents. We will keep you all updated as the project progresses next term.

New Head of Service and strategic lead for SEND Assessment and Review Service
Martyn Patterson who has just been appointed as the new head of service, has already been in touch with us to discuss different ways he and his team would like work with us to support parents to be better informed, confident and heard, to ensure that children and young people with SEND remain at the Centre of all we do. Martyn is keen to foster positive relationships with parents, so from September, he will be holding bookable 10-15-minute slots after each monthly forum meeting. More details of the dates of our forum meetings, how to book etc. to follow.

If you would like to know more about anything we do or have a questions we want to hear from you.

Are you interested in becoming a SEND Parent Champion?

The role of a Parent Representative 

Membership Elections