Our Voice

Please note that this course is now fully booked and a waiting list is in place.

Our Voice and the Enfield Psychology Service would like to offer parents and carers an opportunity to have confidential space and time away from their busy lives to reflect and feel empowered in their busy parenting/family journeys. 

A small group of parents will meet every Thursday for 6 weeks starting after the Half Term Break, where they will be guided in one-hour structured sessions online to explore their strengths and the rich resources they have developed over the years. 

There will be an additional celebration session (either online or in-person depending on circumstances at the time).

For full details see our booklet here. 

The Educational Psychology team are providing a series of events to support parents and young people. 

1) A series of Emotional Wellbeing events for Secondary school-aged children/young people (parents are welcome to accompany to provide support) and the parents and carers of primary school-aged children: 

Programme of events 

Behaviour workshop for parents and carers - 25th May 10 - 11 am 

Anxiety Workshop for parents and carers - Tuesday 8th June 10 -11 am 

Body image workshop (and rejecting diet culture) for secondary school-aged young people Tuesday 8th June and (part 2) Tuesday 15th June - 4.30 - 5.30 pm 

Coming up:

Reducing Sibling Rivalry  (parents ) Tuesday 22nd June 8-9 pm 

Mindfulness in action (parents and young people) Wed 7th July 7.30 - 8.30 pm 

Planning a meaningful summer (young people and/or parent carers) Tue 13th July 7.30 - 8.30 pm 

2) Based on growing concerns about emotionally based school avoidance the EPS is partnering with the Education Welfare Service to carry out discussion groups with parents and carers and young people (as well as schools). For details and to join please see flyers below: 

Discussion group for parents/carers - Wed 9th June 8 - 9.15 pm 

Discussion group for young people Wed 9th June 5- 6.15 pm 

Our Voice hosted two videoconferences in conjunction with a panel of Speech and Language therapists, looking at how parents and carers can help their child/young person to manage and communicate their emotions effectively. 

You can see the presentation from the two sessions here. 

The 'safety toolkit' referred to in the presentation can be accessed here. 

You may wish to access some symbols to use when creating your own toolkit to use at home. This website has a good range which you may find useful - you can access a free 21-day trial (thereafter you will be charged a monthly fee so don't forget to cancel if you don't want to incur this). Alternatively, you may wish to talk to your child's school or speech therapist for suggestions.  

Our Voice are planning a busy programme of events for May and June 21 including: 

• Helping your child manage and communicate their emotions at home: Tue 18th 8-9 pm and Wed 19th 10 - 11.30 am
• Protecting vulnerable children and young people from exploitation: Wed 26th May 1 - 2.30 pm)
• Tree of Life support group (6/7 week course) Thursdays 10.30 - 11.30 starting 10th June 
• Protecting vulnerable dependants Tuesday 15th June 10 - 11.30 am 

For more information, and booking details see our events' booklet here.

Invitation for parents of children with ASD to talk about their experiences of home-schooling.

We have received a request for parents of children with ASD who are interested in participating in a research study on their experiences of home-schooling during lockdown. The study is being conducted by one of Enfield's Trainee Educational Psychologists, as part of her Doctoral studies at UCL. 

It is hoped that the results of this study will help to raise awareness of potential challenges and support needed during pandemics and school closures and identify areas in which improvements could be made for children/young people and their families. 

Parents are asked to discuss their experiences in an interview lasting up to one hour. 

Details of the project are on the attached information sheet. 

Our next event for children will be an online party exclusive to Our Voice members only. 

It takes place on Thursday 15th April from 3-4 pm, with the ever-popular Mr Marvel, and his magic bunny, lots of interactive games and magic. 

If you are on our mailing list you will receive details of how to book. 

If you are not yet on our mailing list - please email us at info@ourvoiceenfield.org.uk to join. 

Our Voice held a Q&A session with a team from Public Health, on 16th March 21, which focused on the specific issues of vaccinations for young people with Special Needs and Disabilities, and their carers. 

You can see the full Q&A from the event here

Additionally Public Health have provided us with a general Q&A which you can see here. 

Please note that this information was correct at the time of publication but is likely to change after that time. 

Our Voice held their 'Meet the SEND Heads' Q&A session on Friday 26th March, with a panel from across the Local Authority and Health including SEND Services, Education, EPS, CAMHS, Early Years, Health, Short Breaks and Social Care, Integrated Learning Disability Service, Travel Assistance and Transport Brokers. 

The panel, Chaired by Our Voice Chair, Fazilla Amide, answered a wide range of questions from parents. 

Please see below: 

• Updates from each of the different services 
• Q&A - including questions answered within the session and those which we didn't have time to include. 
• Q&A from SEN Services and Education 
• Introductory presentation from Our Voice 

We are still awaiting some final responses from SEN Services and Education and will update the Q&A document as soon as these are received.  

To help parents explain the current situation to children and young people, or individuals with Learning Difficulties a number of resources have been produced which you may find helpful. 

Easy Read guidance about Coronavirus and vaccinations here and a video aimed at people with learning difficulties or autism here. 

West Lea school have kindly shared with us the Easy Read Resources they have produced about Coronavirus testing - an Easy Read Guide to taking a Coronavirus test, and a Simplified version plus a Social Story about what happens if your Coronavirus test is positive.   

General guidance explaining what Coronavirus is and what we need to do - child-friendly guides include:

•  this one (available in a variety of languages including Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and French, Polish and Turkish)
• easy-read version like this one from the Down's Syndrome Association,
•  Easy -Read guide from Mencap. 
• Easy Read information from Public Health England

Information about why schools have closed and the importance of staying at home and social distancing, useful child-friendly explanations in graphic format. 

• School is closed 
• What's Up with this Coronavirus? 

Answering questions from your child:

• Place2Be has a useful guidance page to help you answer questions from your child about Coronavirus including links to other sources of information like a Newsround item on the topic, and support for family wellbeing. 
• Young Minds has useful tips for talking to children from their helpline. 

Thank you to everyone who took the time to complete our survey regarding their experiences during lockdown 3. We had a great response with 132 families participating, and have also been able t compare the information you gave us with responses across 23 other London Boroughs (with over 1700 people participating in total).  

As promised we are now using the results to:

• Inform our discussions with the Local Authority and Health Services about what problems families are facing and what actions need to be taken now. 
• Feed into national discussions with the Department for Education and the National Network of Parent Carer forums. 
• Sharing the results with other local voluntary organisations to add to their own understanding of the issues. 

You can see a summary of the results here, and a fuller analysis here.