Parent Carer Forum Jersey

OUR MISSION

We aim to use parents’ knowledge, expertise and experience to help plan and improve the services that are used by children and young people with special needs in Jersey.

ABOUT US

The Parent Carer Forum is a way of bringing parents and carers together to create a strong community of families who have children with special needs.

We hope to represent all families by ensuring a diverse membership and representation of diverse views from children living with special needs and parent/carers’ from all backgrounds and sectors of the community.  We provide regular communication with parent/carers’, ensuring they are able to decide whether to be involved in a piece of work/consultation that we are involved with.

Together the Parent Carer Forum can:

• Support other families by sharing information and experiences
• Find help and learn about services
• Promote inclusive practice
• Feed-back to States departments and make suggestions about the needs of families and children with special needs so that services can be changed and updated
• Work with providers to create quality services for parents, carers and their children

QUARTERLY MEETINGS

Parent Carer Forum Jersey meetings are held every quarter.  Any parent/carer of a child with special needs living in Jersey can put an item on the agenda by contacting the management committee.

Members may be nominated to sit on working groups set up by service providers. Members sitting on such working groups will feedback information to the main parent forum meetings. All members taking on a ‘representative’ role will sign a Parental Representation Agreement Form.

Service providers will be invited to attend Parent Carer Forum Jersey meetings as appropriate.  Information should be provided in a range of ways and formats to support the engagement of a wide number of parents and carers.  Words and terminology used in documents that are circulated at meetings, presentations and discussion should be free of jargon and abbreviations so that no one is excluded from participating.