Coming up – three monthly opportunities to catch up with other parent-carers of children with SEND, in a relaxed and welcoming environment. No need to book – just go along. SEN Consultants join most sessions to offer their insights and guidance. 

Details of all the sessions can be found on this flyer. 

SEN consultants join most sessions to offer insight, guidance and support for you and your children. 

• Coffee and play mornings - first session Monday 12^th January 9.45 -11.15 am at Playbox, Palace Exchange Shopping Centre, Enfield, EN2 6SN. These sessions offer a relaxed, welcoming environment for you to connect with others who truly understand the journey. You'll have a chance to share stories, exchange advice and talk openly about both the challenges and the triumphs in a supportive, non-judgemental space. These sessions are not just about information - they are about your emotional well-being. 
• Coffee and Well-being mornings- first session on Friday 16^th January 9.30 – 11 am at Costa Coffee in Cockfosters EN4 0DN. These sessions offer a relaxed welcoming environment for you to connect with others who truly understand the journey. You'll have a chance to share stories, exchange advice and talk openly about both the challenges and the triumphs in a supportive, non-judgemental space. These sessions are not just about information - they are about your emotional well-being. 
• NEW – SEN coffee and chat afternoons for parents supporting neurodiverse young people aged 14 plus – first session Wednesday 14^th January 12.30 – 2 pm at the Dugdale Arts Centre, 39, London Road, Enfield EN2 6DS. These sessions offer a relaxed and welcoming space for parent carers of young people aged 14 and over with SEN to meet others who are navigating similar experiences and preparing for the transition into adulthood. The sessions are a place to receive support and to look after your emotional well-being. Discussions around your young person's post-14 transitioning journey including sixth form, supported internships, college and supported learning, further education pathways, day services and post-education options. 

From Monday, 5^th January, PAN Disability Children’s Football sessions for ages 5 to 11 will restart in the new indoor venue at Orchardside School.

Sessions are from 5-6 pm, at Orchardside School, 230 Bullsmoor Lane, Enfield EN1 4RL.

Spaces are limited, so please book ahead at https://book.englandfootball.com/Book/5eb0c61f-76e4-4678-9aa8-123acb1598f9?venue=enfieldtownfccommunitysportsdevelopmentltd
Outdoor sessions at Southbury Leisure Centre will be back from April 2026 – watch out for updates on this in due course.

 Are you a passionate advocate for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities and their families?

 Do you want to play a pivotal role in helping our organisation to move forward as we become a registered charity?

 Then we’d love to hear from you!

 Our Voice are currently starting the process of applying to become a Registered Charity   (Charitable Incorporated Organisation or CIO). 

 We are seeking our first three trustees ready for our registration, and to help us ensure the   good governance of our organisation once the registration has been completed.

Interested?

  1) Please read our attached documents:

•   Trustee Information Pack 
• Trustee Role Description
• Our Voice constitution (draft version)
• Who are Our Voice and what do we do?

  2) Please complete the attached application form (including a personal statement setting 
 out why you are interested in the role, what skills and experience you bring, and any other
  relevant information) and email it to us with your CV (or alternatively a brief summary of 
 your key relevant experience, including paid or voluntary roles and lived experience)  
 at info@ourvoiceenfield.org.uk 

   3) The deadline for applications is Friday, 9^th January 26.

  4) If you are successful, we will invite you to attend an online interview between 20^th and  30^th January 2026.

    See our recruitment timeline.  

Overview

Children's Social Care is changing. 

What is happening:

• The Government wants to make children's social care better:  Supporting families earlier, before problems get worse
• Creating stronger multi-agency teams that work together to keep children safe. 

Why is this changing?

• To give every child a safe and secure start in life
• Better chances to achieve and thrive.

What will change in Enfield?

• A new Family Help Service will be created using existing universal and community-based early help offer.
•  Early help professionals and social workers will work together in one team.
• One single family assessment and one plan instead of multiple referrals.

New Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams (MACPTs)

• These teams will include: social workers, police, health professionals, education professionals.
• Work together to investigate statutory child protection and interventions
• Make joint decisions quickly and fairly
• Provide local expert support.

 Support for Parents and Families

• Families will have meetings early on to help plan what changes are needed
• Parents will be offered an independent advocate to explain things and support them at the point of an investigation being initiated.

Benefits for Children and Families

•  Help will come earlier and feel less stressful.
• Professionals like social workers, mental health workers, and domestic abuse experts will work together to support and address the diverse needs of families
• One lead worker will support each family
• Fewer handovers between different services.
• Families will understand the process better with the help of an advocate.
• Families will help create and agree their own support plan.
• Stronger relationships between lead workers and families. 

This information is explained in an Easy-Read format in 'Children's Services are Changing: Easy-Read' 

Update from the Our Voice Parents' Conference - Children's Social Care: How does it help our Children: Mon 15th Dec

On Monday 15th December, Our Voice ran an event for parents in conjunction with the Local Authority and Health, exploring the issues around Social Care for children and young people with additional needs. 

You can see resources from the conference below, and we will add additional resources shortly, including a Q&A from the event. 

•  Social Care Families First Reforms presentation 
• Audio recording of parents' experiences of the child protection system
• Transition to adult services: What parents have learned presentation
• Preparing for Adulthood booklet
• Information about Preparing for Adulthood, including events available to support you through the transition. 

Further information and Background 

The Government is proposing to transform children’s social care to rebalance the system towards early intervention through family help and strengthened multi-agency child protection.

The aim is to offer every child the best start in life with safety, security, and opportunities to achieve and thrive.  This means over the next 12 to 18 months, Enfield’s Children's Social Care will change how they operate and deliver services to local children and families. Key components of this reform include building on the strengths of the existing universal and community-based early help offer, to create an integrated family help service, with early help practitioners and social workers in the same team working to a single assessment and plan. In addition, child protection reform will be introduced by establishing local Multi-Agency Child Protection Teams (MACPTs). These multi-disciplinary teams will include a minimum of social care, police, health, and education professionals making decisions about statutory child protection investigations and interventions, offering a local and accessible centre of expertise. A focus on supporting families through family group decision-making will also be embedded and parents who are undergoing child protection investigations will be offered advocacy.

The Local Authority says that the benefits for children, parents and carers will be:

• Interventions will be more timely and non-stigmatising without the need for multiple referrals or assessments, with one family assessment and plan.
• Professionals from various disciplines, including social workers, alternatively qualified practitioners, mental health specialists, and domestic abuse experts, will collaborate more to address the diverse needs of families.
• One lead practitioner will work with the family, and transfer points between teams and services will reduce.
• Families will understand more fully the child protection process through the independent advocacy service offered at the point of an investigation being initiated.
• Families will be integral to creating and owning the plan for change through early family decision-making meetings at the point of referral.
• Improved parental engagement and positive relationships with lead practitioners.

Further information can be found by reading the government statement Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive, DfE, November 2024. Your experience and insights are essential in helping shape the future of family services in Enfield. You can share your views and ideas by emailing the Local Authority at: StrategicSocialCare@enfield.gov.uk

The Local Authority and the Department for Education have produced some Easy-Read materials to explain what is happening:

• 'Children's Services are Changing: Easy-Read' 
• Children's Social Care National Framework: Easy-Read
• An Illustrated Guide to the Children's Social Care National Framework
• Families First Reforms - Transforming Practice: What will change and what will stay the same

Additional useful information: 

The Children's Society has a useful explanation of what Children's Social Care means

Our guide to What's On -Play and Leisure in and around Enfield has lots of information on local SEND-specific and inclusive activities in and around the area (including some days out in Central London and further afield). The guide was last updated on 19th December 2025. 

This guide focuses on ongoing term-time activities (although some continue during school holidays), and will be regularly updated with the latest activities and dates, so do check back regularly.

We also have a short guide to activities on over the school Christmas holidays - see our latest 'What's On at Christmas 25?' guide here. 

We will also let you know about relevant one-off events via our weekly updates to members - please join our mailing list to receive these, if you haven't already done so. 

In addition, we usually publish a short 'What's on?' guide during each school holiday, featuring information about specific activities during the next holiday period.  

Please note that these activities are provided by external providers, not Our Voice, and inclusion in this guide should not be taken as our endorsement of any particular provider. 

If you know about any relevant local, accessible activities that aren't included in our guides, please do let us know - email us at info@ourvoiceenfield.org.uk 

Positive Behaviour Support information and resources

Following our successful Positive Behaviour Support project last year, Our Voice ran an additional Introduction to Positive Behaviour Support workshop on 2nd October 25.  

The Cheviots Team (part of the Joint Service for Disabled Children) are continuing to run monthly Behaviour Support Drop-in sessions for families, giving you an opportunity to discuss individual questions regarding your child/young person's behaviour. 

The next sessions will be on Fridays 6th February and 6th March at Cheviots Children's Centre, 10 am to 12 noon. You do not need to book, but if you would like Cheviots to provide creche facilities and/or a translator for the session, please email them to confirm clare.redrupp@enfield.gov.uk, giving as much notice as possible. A new flyer should be available in January with full details. 

You can see the slides for the Introduction to Positive Behaviour Support workshop here, along with the 'Capable Environments reflection tool' that we use in the session. 

Links for services referred to in the session, and additional useful resources: 

• Enfield Advisory Service for Autism - Home
• What do we mean by quality of life? factsheet from BILD
• Managing Anxiety factsheet from BILD 
• The Impact of the Environment factsheet from BILD 
• https://eric.org.uk/advice-for-children-with-constipation
• Information sheet on spitting

• The National Autistic Society website has a useful section on Behaviour which includes: Information about distressed behaviour, Anger Management, Meltdowns, and Dealing with Change.

• The Educational Psychology Service offers a telephone support helpline  which you can use to book a call to discuss concerns or issues relating to your child
• You might also like to have a look at this video - on Supporting Children's Behaviour at Home. 

The 24-25 Positive Behaviour Support Project 

Our Voice ran a joint Positive Behaviour Support Project from April 24 to April 25, as part of the Empowering Families and Networks in Enfield Project, delivered jointly with the Joint Service for Disabled Children (Cheviots team): 

• We ran six Introduction to Positive Behaviour Support workshops - you can see the presentation from these sessions here. 

• We co-delivered Positive Behaviour support drop-in sessions, giving parents a chance to discuss individual questions relating to their child/young person's behaviour. All the joint sessions between Our Voice and the JSDC have now been completed. 

If your child has an EHCP and is now in year 9 or above, it is important to start thinking about what will happen when they get to the age of 16 and become legally responsible for making their own decisions, and perhaps start to think about their future in terms of getting a job or living more independently. We know that this can be a worrying time for parents and carers, and it is important to start thinking about the transition as early as possible so that you will be well-informed and ready to support your young person through the changes.

The Local Authority's Preparing for Adulthood booklet is a key document to help you understand the process and support. You can see this booklet on the Local Offer here and there is  additional information about the process here

We recommend that you should attend as many of the Preparing for Adulthood events as you can. It is worth starting as soon as possible, and you may wish to repeat some of the sessions over the next few years.

You might also like to have a look at the Our Voice presentation on our top tips for Preparing for Adulthood, from our Social Care conference on 15th December 2025 - a practical overview of some of our team's real-life experiences of going through the process with their young people.

Preparing for Adulthood events

The Local Authority run a series of Preparing for Adulthood events and the full programme is available here. The programme will run from 9th January 2026 to 26th June 2026. 

These events are part of a series about different aspects of the Preparing for Adulthood process.  If you have been unable to attend a session, or you would like to look at the presentations from the previous year, the presentations are added to the Local Offer Preparing for Adulthood page here shortly after each session. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see links to each presentation. 

Most sessions are held online or at the Integrated Learning Disability Service, Carnegie Building, 258a Hertford Road, Enfield, EN3 5BN. 

The next PfA event is the Introduction to Preparing for Adulthood – the pathway, process and support, taking place on Friday 9th January  10.30 am to 12.30 pm at the Integrated Learning Disability Service, Carnegie Building, 258a Hertford Road, Enfield, EN3 5BN.

This provides an overview of the transition process and aims to help parent-carers to understand what happens and when and introduces the information and events available to support you through the transition process.

Following this, the next event will be Decision Making and Me on Friday 23^rd January (10.30 am to 12.30 pm) which looks at the impact of the Mental Capacity Act on anyone aged 16 and over. 

Drop-in sessions

On the first Friday of every month, parents and carers of young people aged 16 and over can join the monthly drop-in sessions 10 am - 12 pm at the Integrated Learning Disability Service in Hertford Road, where you can talk to a member of the ILDS team, and Jane Richards from Families in Transition to Adulthood. More information on the flyer here. If you would like to attend, please book an appointment by noon on the previous day. If this day does not work for you, please contact Jane to discuss an alternative timing.

You are welcome to bring your young person along with you. 

The Rising to Reception programme is designed for children with communication difficulties who are due to start primary school reception in September 2026. 

The brochure for this year's programme of events can be found here. 

You can see the link to sign up for the programme in the brochure. Once you have signed up, you will receive invitations to each session via text or email. 

The first events are: 

Wednesday 17th December - 10 am - 11.30 am - the Enfield Admission Team will inform parents about the process of applying for a reception place for 2026 including practical tips and guidance on submitting applications, and specific information for a child who has an EHCP. 

11th February - Our Voice will share our tips and strategies to support children with additional needs in preparing for school. 

Welcome to the PINS Project 2025-2026.

Partnerships for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS) is a national programme which brings together health and education workforces and expert parent carers into mainstream primary schools to:

•                     Help shape whole school SEND provision.

•                     Provide early interventions at a school level.

•                     Upskill school staff.

•                     Support strengthening of partnerships between schools and parent carers.

In the overall aim to improve positive outcomes for neurodivergent children, supporting them to achieve and thrive.

Neurodiversity describes the population as a whole and recognises the diversity of different brains.

Neurotypical describes most of the population, the majority group that experiences and processes the world in the same way.

Neurodivergent describes the minority group that experiences and processes the world in a different way. This may include Autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, and Dyspraxia to name a few. 

The PINS Project in Enfield will run until March 2026. It will be delivered in 10 Primary Schools in Enfield, as well as continuing with support in the 5 Primary Schools that took part in the 2024-2025 PINS programme.

Our Voice is supporting the delivery of PINS at a strategic level in the local area, through involvement in the local partnership and support to the project delivery team. We are also responsible for delivery of the parent carer engagement activity in all the participating schools. 

During the project, we will be:

•        Running coffee mornings at all participating schools;
•        Offering training and webinars on topics that parent carers have highlighted they need to know about;
•        Newsletters, letting parent carers know about what is happening in the project, events and opportunities that they and their families can get involved in;
•       Running Peer Disability Training for schools. 

      What support should my child receive in school webinar

O   On 12th November 25 we ran a webinar on what support children with additional needs should recieve in school, as part of what is known as 'Ordinarily Available Provision'. You can see the information from this session on this news page. 

Our Parent Carers Survey.

For the 6 participating schools, we really want to hear from all the parents about their experience with their school. There will be two surveys in the project. One which we are conducting at the beginning of the project and one at the end. 

If you know your school is participating in PINS, please feel free to take part in our survey at https://forms.gle/g9vPyhATGoxzEEDS9 

Get Involved

If you want to get involved in the PINS project, please check out our PINS Get Involved Flyer.

We are hard at work planning events, training and webinars for you, so please come back to check in.

If you would like to receive updates straight to your inbox or phone, you can sign up for the Our Voice mailing list, PINS mailing list (specifically an update about the project and events) and our PINS WhatsApp group. Please email us at PINS.OV.Enfield@outlook.com 

2024-2025 PINS Project

Newsletter 1 

Newsletter 2 (final) 

NHS Waiting Room is a comprehensive digital platform that connects you to safe and trusted resources to support your mental health and wellbeing. The website includes clear and detailed information about local mental health support, self-help tools, community services, and more. Waiting Room supports anyone living in North Central London, from young people to adults to parents.  Making a free account allows you to create a personalised wellbeing plan, which you can use to journal, track your goals, and support your wellbeing journey.

https://londonwaitingroom.nhs.uk/

NHS Waiting Room – Autism and ADHD site

The new Autism and ADHD site is for children and young people, their families, and professionals in North Central London. This site was co-produced with young people, parent/carers, and professionals across the five North London boroughs, and is a dedicated platform that offers tailored resources, guidance, and support around autism and ADHD. Young people can search for organisations suitable to their needs, and parent/carers can access our live online calendar to look for local events and training sessions.

https://londonwaitingroom.nhs.uk/autism-adhd-support-ncl