About Barnsley Parents and Carers Forum
Aiming High is a new Government program with extra funding to provide more support to parents and carers of children with disabilities or additional needs in each Local Authority.
Part of this program is funding to establish a Parents Participation Forum. To access funds for starting the forum by Government deadlines, Barnsley Local Authority sought out an informal, but representational body of parents. This body will allow parents to be involved at a strategic level on improving service provision.
We have moved things forward in cooperation with our Local Programme Manager by arranging a launch event which took place on the 1st of July. This event was well attended with many showing an interest in the new forum. Formalising and legally establishing the forum will then qualify us to become part of the Government's "Aiming High" programme with the associated benefits that this will bring. We have already begun networking with service providers with good results and now have representation in some strategy groups.
We anticipate the new forum will continue to build on these foundations and forge ahead establishing working relationships with all relevant service departments. We will have regular meetings where ALL parents wanting to be involved will be able to contribute, either by attending in person or by contacting us online by email or the website. We hope to arrange an information and family fun day in the near future to allow whole families to attend. The intention of the forum is to help parents and carers find out more about available services in Barnsley and contribute with ideas of how improvements to services can be made.
To find out more about how all this works, and the potential benefits to you, we invite you to join the forum and be as active as you wish in helping to improve service provision in Barnsley.