Parental Involvement in Decision-Making

1
Parental Involvement in Decision-Making
2
Overview

• The importance of parental involvement
• Why involve parents?
• Degrees of involvement
• Strategies for engaging parents
• Impact of involvement in decision-making
• Parent and professional views
• Implications for Childrens Centres

3
Introduction

• The importance of parental involvement in
  decision-making
• Sure Start Strategy explicit about involvement of
  parents
• In consultation
• In participation
• In knowledge sharing
• In feedback about services

4
Why Involve Parents?

• Inclusiveness
• Capacity Building
• Sustainability
• Benefits
• Local knowledge
• Able to identify gaps in provision
• Can monitor and feed back on service provision
• A sense of ownership
• Parents actively involved in influencing the
  quality of life of their own and other children
  where they live

5
Evidence Base

• Setting up Stage reports (x8)
• Surveys (x16)
• Parental involvement topics (x4)
• Interagency perspectives (x6)

6
Key Themes

• Parental involvement in decision-making happens
  at a number of levels and in a variety of ways
• Parental involvement works in terms of affecting
  the shape of services and service use
• A number of strategies have been effective in
  promoting the involvement of diverse groups of
  parents fathers young parents travellers
• There are challenges

7
Involvement in Decision-making Continuum
Informal
Formal
Working groups Holiday activities
Parent Rep. groups Some or all of whom sit on
partnerships
Blanket consultation Delivery plan Surveys
Consultation in situ On-going feedback from
parents at activities, courses, trips
Feeder groups Forums Parent network
8
Impact of Parental Involvement

• Surveys
• Survey of parents views Family Friendly
  standard for library services
• Consultation in situ
• At Travellers site site based service
  delivery increased immunization rates
• Consultation with fathers fathers choice of
  activities 659 father/male carer attendances
  in 2004

9
Impact of Parental Involvement

• Consultation in situ
• Consultation with Bangladeshi community over
  barriers to health meet the professionals
  day identification of Bengali speaking GP
  for outreach surgeries sessional workers
  in community
• Working Groups
• Summer holiday activity group development
  of 7 holiday activities attended by 750 parents
  and children

10
Strategies for Involving Parents

• Building trust and relationships informal
  events
• Talking with experienced Sure Start parents
• Confidence building
• Informal ways of talking about Sure Start
• Parent-only meetings to discuss their views
• Parent-friendly meetings with professionals
  which
• - Avoid jargon
• - Give parents enough information about
• whats being discussed
• - Regularly give parents the chance to speak
• Value opinions consult regularly briefly
  face-to-face feed back results act on
  suggestions
• Brief accessible with incentives follow up at
  activities follow up mailings follow up phone
  calls

• Making decisions about the whole programme

Consultation in situ at activities/events
Surveys
11
Parents Views of Involvement in Decision-Making
On being trained as a Parent Representative
Now we can put something back into the programme
instead of taking out all the time We can take
the views and queries of other parents who go to
the playgroups to the meetings, and take
information from the meetings back to them We
can suggest agenda items
12
Professionals Views of Parental Involvement
The benefits of parents and senior managers
working together is that they have a tendency to
keep each others feet on the ground (Sure Start
Executive) Its been torturous, and difficult
changing our ways of working, and really
listening to parents its brought us into the
21st Century! (Health Manager) The draft
Childrens Act puts more emphasis on partnership
with parents, and thats good, because parents
are concerned about good outcomes too, not just
about being parents (Social Services Executive)
13
Challenges
At first, it was all over our headsprofessionals
are listening more now (Parent)

• Organisational
• Takes time and resources to develop and sustain
  at the formal levels
• Challenges organisational culture and practices
• Language
• Affects time tables and priorities
• Process
• Issue of how representative Parent Rep. views are
  and approaches to addressing this
• Wider Parent Network events
• Consultation at Fun Days

14
Childrens Centre Guidance

• ensure the views of children, parents/carers
  and families are valued and taken into account in
  the planning, delivery and evaluation of
  services.
• Particular attention will need to be paid to
  their views on how to ensure these services will
  be accessible, and culturally appropriate for the
  communities they serve.
• Sure Start Unit, A Sure Start Childrens Centre
  for Every Community Phase 2 Planning Guidance
  (2006-08) July 2005

15
Implications for Childrens Centres

• Parental involvement in decision-making works in
  a number of ways
• Many more parents have been involved at informal
  levels of decision-making than at formal levels
• To sustain it, there will need to be dedicated
  resources dedicated staff
• Approaches to parental involvement need to be
  embedded in practice at each stage of service
  design and delivery
• Approaches need to be stepped, flexible,
  responsive, diverse and on-going