Well it’s been 6 months since I took over the role of Portsmouth Parent Voice Manager and what a busy few months they’ve been.
I have been finding my feet and have brought a few changes along the way, one of which was being setting up a PPV Steering Group for our wonderful parent reps.
We have had a great visit from solicitor Victoria Federico, who came to speak to parent carers on their legal rights and legal background of EHCPs and in June PPV celebrated their 10th Birthday with a coffee morning and a visit from the Moriah Family Support Group.
PPV played a huge part in the recent Local Area SEND Inspection in July, many of our parent reps attended workshops, feeding back those important parent carer views.
We had a great turn out for the open parent event and PPVs co-production group Shaping Better Futures Together (SBFT) had the opportunity to show how they work in co-production with other organisations and this didn’t go un noticed by the inspectors.
So a big thank you to all who got involved, your voices were heard!
Of course you may of notice we took a break over the summer, my working hours are term time only as I have children at home, I had the opportunity to experience the Sainsbury’s Active Kids Camp with my 10 year old who has autism, ADHD and a Language Disorder, this gave me 3 days a week respite, the staff really supported my son and helped him be part of his community and gave me a well-deserved rest.
They are limited to the level of needs they can support and can’t provide 1-1 support but made a conscious effect to read his individual behaviour plan and my little dude loved his time there, so here’s a thumbs up to Sainsbury’s please keep up this good practise as we need more holiday camps like this in Portsmouth.
Currently you may have heard the Portsmouth SEND Local Offer is being redesigned. PPV, alongside Dynamite, have had the opportunity to be part of this from the start and will keep you updated on the progress and relaunch dates.
We had the pleasure of Steve Rolls from Portsmouth Mediation Service joining us for a coffee morning in preparation for our Restorative training session in October, which will be followed by an EHCP annual review workshop with SENDIASS .
You may have noticed a CAMHs coffee morning in December in our events section on Facebook, yes that’s right I said CAMHs! We will be holding a feedback coffee morning so a member of the CAMHs team can feedback what they are doing in reply to your concerns.
We will be sending out a survey in October to gather your experiences of the service which PPV will then take back to the CAMHs quarterly review meeting, so keep an eye out and make sure you share your experiences.
Please remember to follow us on social media (links to our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are at the bottom of the page) and if you check out Instagram you will get to see what we get up to at PPV. Also if you’re interested in getting involved with PPV please check out our website for details.
I look forward to sharing another update in the next newsletter, so please enjoy reading and if you have any questions please use PPV’s contact details and get in touch.