The Parents’ Forum’s Impact and Influence

We empower parents/carers by influencing positive changes in health,
education and social care policies and practices for families, children and young people with disabilities/additional needs.

There are approximately 20,000 children and young people in the Bradford district who have a disability or additional need. That’s a lot of parent carers! Our aim is to support them all and be their voice.

How do we do this?

Strategic Meetings

We represent the voice of our parent carer members by attending the following meetings so we can pass your views on to the people who make the decisions:

Click on the highlighted names to view past minutes and see the PFBA’s contribution

Email and Social Media

We communicate with our members by sending regular newsletters and blogs – sign up to the email list here.

We have over 1000 followers on our Facebook page, where we share lots of useful information. We have a private Facebook group too, just for parent carers.

More than 500 people follow us on Twitter.

We have an Instagram account too, which we use when we have interesting things to show!

Our YouTube channel has videos of local services who have done presentations for us.

Support Groups

We are in regular contact with local support groups and organisations, reaching several thousand parent carers.

We jointly organise events for support groups to get together and discuss issues that are important to their members.

You can find a support group here

Co-production

One of the PFBA’s main aims is to ensure that co-production values are followed so that parent carers are included and able to influence the way that services are designed, commissioned and delivered.

The SEND Code of Practice (January 2015) highlights the expectations of core principles that underpin all legislation and guidance related to SEND:

1.1 Section 19 of the Children and Families Act 2014 makes clear that local authorities, in carrying out their functions under the Act in relation to needs
(SEND), must have regard to:
– the views, wishes and feelings of the child or young person, and the child’s parents
the importance of the child or young person, and the child’s parents, participating as fully as possible in decisions, and being provided with
– the information and support necessary to enable participation in those decisions
– the need to support the child or young person, and the child’s parents, in order to facilitate the development of the child or young person and to help them achieve the best possible educational and other outcomes, preparing them effectively for adulthood

Co-production, when applied effectively to supporting children and young people with SEND, enables the CYP, their parents and/or carers and professionals across multiple agencies and sectors working together as equal partners to design, plan, deliver and review support and services in order to achieve shared outcomes. The process recognises children and young people, parent carers and professionals as assets that all have important contributions to make due to their differing knowledge, skills and experience.

To find out more about co-production and how it works in the Bradford district, visit the Local Offer webpage here.