Dear Parents and Carers,

 Get involved in SEND Co-production and ‘Have your Say’ workshop opportunities

As you may know work is well underway to improve the way SEND support services are planned and provided for children, young people and families in Birmingham. It is a priority to us that we involve as many SEND parents and carers on this journey, so that we deliver the right support for families who use the SEND services in order to produce the very best outcomes for children and young people.

Over the coming weeks and months we will be holding 7 parent/carer engagement events which follow on from the earlier conversation started with some parent and carers who were able to join us at the Carrs Lane venue in September.  This time we want to extend the invitation to a greater audience of parent carers at different locations around the city and hold workshops.

We’d like to share thoughts and ideas on co-production and to hear your views and experiences too.   We would also like to hear your thoughts on the Local Offer website and how we can improve that resource, so please come with your opinions on the site. www.localofferbirmingham.co.uk

The first of these events will be on 15^th December 10am – 1pm at Carrs Lane (central Birmingham) again, and will run as a workshop style event looking at co-production and the Local Offer website.  We will be offering refreshments at this event including a light lunch and a raffle for one of 20 wellbeing packs worth £20 each.

For those parent and carers unable to come along to Carrs Lane in the daytime, we plan to hold an online event covering the same topics on the same day (15^th December), during the evening – however this will be a 2 hour event (not 3).

There will be other opportunities to get involved in workshops planned for January 2022 onward; these will be held in the North, South, East and West of the city as well as once again in central Birmingham. More details about the January events to come.

·         If you would like to attend the event at Carrs Lane on the 15^th December please register here.

·         If you would like to join the online event on 15^th December, please register here for the link to the meeting at 6pm on the 15^th. Please note that this will be the only virtual event of our series.

 We respectfully state that these sessions will only look at SEND resources, systems and engagement and we will not be to able discuss individual concerns.  We would also respectfully ask that participants adhere to modelling positive behaviour.  Please be prepared to wear a mask inside the building, take a Lateral Flow test on the day of the event (please do not attend if you have any symptoms or your test is positive) and use hand sanitiser before entering the building.

Please note that if the government guidelines on gatherings change before this event, we will hold the event online in order that we meet in the safest way possible.

Sue Harrison

Director of Education and Skills/ Executive Director of Education and Skills