Our Voice

Following our very popular Travel Assistance videoconference with the Transport team and SEN Travel Brokers, we have summarised the information from this session You can see the full Q&A here. 

We were pleased to host a videoconference last week in association with Public Health, who updated parents and carers about the Coronavirus pandemic and answered our questions about what the situation is currently like in our area and how we and our children can stay safe. 

All the questions and answers from the session are summarised here. 

Our Voice hosted a videoconference on 9th July to discuss questions regarding Short Breaks and summer activities for children and young people with SEND. We were joined by a panel from the Joint Service for Disabled Children and Cheviots Children's Centre. You can now see the Q&A from this videoconference here. The document includes questions and answers about what support is available over the summer, along with useful contact points. 

Our Voice are pleased to announce that our new 'Cuppa and Chat' sessions will be continuing across the summer. 

The sessions will take place: 

Tuesday evenings 8.30 - 9.30 pm - 14th July, 28th July, 4th August, 18th August and 1st September

Wednesday mornings 10.30 - 11.30 am 29th July, 12th August, 26th August and 9th September 

These informal online sessions give parents and carers of children with Special Needs and Disabilities an opportunity to connect with others who may be facing similar challenges (including members of the Our Voice team), to share experiences and ask questions. 

The sessions are completely informal so don't worry if you need to arrive late, start early, or face regular interruptions from your children. 

No need to book - just join us on your computer, tablet or smartphone here. If you have not used 'GoTo Meetings' before you will need to install the app first here. 

For full details see our flyer here.

Our next exclusive Mr Marvel Zoom party will take place on Sunday 28th June 3 - 4 pm. 

This is a great opportunity to provide some fun and entertainment for your children via Zoom. It's a live, interactive show containing a mix of magic, puppets, games, live animation and of course the real magic bunny. 

Have a sneak peek here. 

This event follows the success of our last Zoom party which was a huge hit with all the children. One parent said "I just wanted to say a big thank you to Our Voice for organising this afternoon's Mr Marvel Zoom. Our son absolutely loved it, listening to him laugh and chuckle at Mr Marvel's antics was so lovely". 

The event is free but places must be pre-booked and are exclusive to Our Voice mailing list members. If you would like to join but are not already on our mailing list, please email us at info@ourvoiceenfield.org.uk, with your name, email address and telephone number, and ask to be added to our mailing list and receive details of how to book this event. 

To help us support you and feed-back your concerns to the Local Authority Our Voice recently ran a survey to find out about parent/carers' biggest concerns during this difficult time. We focused on the issues around supporting your child's mental and emotional health and wellbeing and looking after your own mental health needs.

We had a great response to the survey, with some really revealing responses, showing how much pressure parents are under at this time. You can see a summary of the survey results here. 

We have shared this report with key Department Heads at the Local Authority and Health, and are now using this as a basis for discussions on what they could be doing to support employees. It will also form a basis for our own planning on what we should do over the next 3 or 4 months.    

Thank you to everyone who took the time to respond. 

Our Voice has been flagging to the LA that parents and carers have particular concerns about the impact of the current lockdown on children with SEND who are due to transition to a new educational establishment this year (or leave education entirely), in many cases after the disruption of a prolonged absence from school, and potentially without a reasonable opportunity to achieve any kind of closure regarding their existing school. We were pleased to give parents' input (along with SENDIASS) to the Local Authority on parents' views and concerns about this issue. 

This information was fed into guidance which has now been issued to schools across the Borough

You can see a summary of the guidance here and the full guidance document here. 

Following our videoconference for parents and carers last week, we have put together a Q&A document, covering the questions that you raised. We had a very useful conversation with representatives of Educational Psychology, Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Social and Emotional Mental Health, Joint Service for Disabled Children, and Durants school (Behaviour lead). 

The Q&A summarises our discussions about the questions you raised covering: 

• Supporting your child's learning at home
• Emotion and behaviour (including challenging behaviour) 
• Support for mental health issues - yours and your child's 

We have also included links to a range of other resources and websites on these issues. 

We will be working with a team drawn from EPS, CAMHS, SEMH, JSDC/Cheviots and Durants to look at what other support could be provided during this time, and had our first (virtual) meeting yesterday. We are using the results from our survey on your biggest concerns to inform our thinking so please do complete the survey if you haven't already had time to do so - it should take you less than 5 minutes. 

Online safety for children is particularly important at this time when many children will be spending extra time on electronic devices at home.

Parents often feel that they don't know enough about online safety and it can be difficult to know where to find the best reliable information - particularly information tailored to children with special needs and disabilities. 

Enfield Schools and Children's Services have kindly helped us to put together this list of useful sources of information including both SEND specific and general guidance and covering a wide range of topics from general internet safety to cyber-bullying. 

The Spring 2020 edition of our newsletter has just been printed and will be distributed via schools shortly, as well as being available in selected libraries, colleges and Doctors' surgeries. 

We have a packed edition with news about: 

• Our recent events including family events and our Parents' Conference in November 2019. 
• Updates from the Joint Services for Disabled Children and other services. 
• Articles on topics like the 'Moving on' programme, Mental Capacity issues for young people with SEND, Hydrotherapy and GP Annual Health checks. 
• Information about things to do locally.  

You can read the newsletter here.