parent partnership

[julieann]

Hi all,

 

The parent of the child I support is being pushed into a change of provision that she doesn't want. I advised her to get independant help. I meant like Ipsea or NAS and she has gone to her local parent partnership. Aren't they employed by the local authority? If they are how can they be independant? Has anyone had experience of useful help from parent parnership?

 

Julieann

[bensmum2]

Hi my experience of parent partnership help has been a total waste of time over the years yes they are employed by the local authority, everything they told me to do i had already tried , in fact i had more idea than them,a note of warning though, 6 weeks ago they told me to get education welfare involved in helping get my son back into school,(because after all they should be concerned about his "welfare" ) when i did this, the ew spent the last 6 weeks trying to prove my son isnt disabled and getting a lot of people who have never even met him to say his problems are mild, this culminated in my being told i was keeping him off for my own needs and fabricating his illness and therefore damaging him for the rest of his life and if i didnt send him back in immediately he would be placed on the child protection register!! BEWARE !! Thanks parent partnership!!

[joybed]

I found parent partnership to be pretty good they came to all Ms appointments when we were having problems at school and really forced school to acknowledge the difficulties we were experiencing as a family i felt she was on my side and helped me investigate options i hadnt previously considered. Education welfare pretended to be on my side but ultimately said he had to go back to school. The ed psych said M was coping and didn,t acknowledge anything i told her at all. Fortunately for us M was dissaplied from a few subjects at school and this mafe tolerable for us, along with a taxi to school and an increase in support this was enough to get M happily back to school, for now anyway no doubt it will all kick off again soon.

[Sally44]

I found my own PP were useful in accompanying me to meetings and to make notes of everything said. They would also challenge anything that was untrue. It came as a surprise to me to find out that the LEA can actually lie and threaten parents and give then totally untrue information etc.

However the PP are not pre-active. They cannot advice parents to take a certain course of action especially if that involves advising the parents to get independent advice that may cost money. They can tell the parent that is an option, but they wait for the parent to ask the question.

So to get the best out of your PP I think you have to ask them direct questions.

Yes they are employed by the LEA. But they are supposed to be independent. So mine were useful to a certain degree, but I was also suspicious of them and didn't give them too much information if I felt they might pass it onto LEA departments - although I know they are not supposed to pass on any information as it should be confidential. And the PP did always ask my permission before they spoke to anyone about my sons situation.