Identificación de los Elementos que Producen las Controversias en Contratos de la Industria

Next, invite each member of the group to say on a scale of 0-5 how comfortable they are in performing different tasks. This will help to build a profile of the skills available to you and highlight any areas where there are gaps. You will then be able to make enquiries about what training is available in your area. This might be through individuals attending training courses run in your area, or by paying a trainer to provide one day’s training to members of the

2 Working as a team 2.2 Developing the team

Some parents might not want to sit on a committee but are quite happy to be

responsible for certain tasks. For example, taking leaflets to schools, helping to organise an event, maintaining the membership list.

If there are not enough people on the group to do all the work, think about setting up small working groups that could be chaired by a committee member, where other willing parent carer members of the forum do some of the work.

The steering group might find itself in the position where there are lots of areas of work that they want to get involved in, but they don’t have enough capacity to take it all on. If this is the case it is important to prioritise and concentrate on the areas the forum can manage. It may be possible to pick up the other issues later.

There may be occasions when, due to the demands of personal or family life, the forum work becomes too much for one member. This is perfectly understandable, and members should be encouraged to think about their personal wellbeing before that of the forum. Sometimes taking a brief break from the work will be enough, but at times other members may need to stand down for a time, cease active forum work or even resign from the committee. Individual members should be encouraged to consider all of the options available and do what is right for them.

Parent carer representatives

Forums will want to nominate parent carer representatives to sit on local authority and health service strategic boards, committees, or task and finish groups so that parents’ voices are heard and acted upon when decisions are being made about services affecting their children.

You can read more about these committees in Section 4.1 Working in partnership – How local government works and Section 4.2 Working in partnership – How local health services are provided.

It is important that parent carer representatives are able to feed in not only their own experiences and views but also those of others, even if they personally do not agree with them.

You might want to consider developing a code of conduct for parent carer

representatives, so they understand what is expected of them when representing the forum. This will include how they are going to report back to the forum and what is expected of them around issues of confidentiality. This helps to promote a professional image of the forum’s work and will help the forum to gain credibility with services.

2 Working as a team 2.2 Developing the team

You will want to make sure parent carer representatives report back to you about their work. You might find the sample parent carer representative feedback form on the Contact a Family website helpful:

www.cafamily.org.uk/runaforum

You might also want to discuss with the local authority/health service some minimum standards for the involvement of parent carer representatives in their meetings. For example, reasonable expenses; accessible meetings, times and venue; papers provided in good time before meetings.

Some forums find it helpful to have a minimum of two parents on a steering group. This has the following advantages:

• it may enable the forum to represent a wider group of experiences, for example

early years/primary/secondary/transition, learning disability/physical/complex needs

• it is less intimidating for parents

• new parent carer representatives can be supported by more experienced

parents

• if one parent carer is unable to attend a meeting, the other parent carer can

cover.

Some forums are structured so that all parent carer representatives are also members of the forum steering group. This is not always possible, especially if the local authority/ health service invite the forum to provide parent carer representatives for lots of different working groups and committees.

Professionals sometimes invite individual parents who are not members of the forum to sit on their working groups or committees as parent carer representatives. When this occurs, it is not always clear how these parents represent experiences other than their own.

It can be helpful to meet with these professionals to tell them about the forum and explain how you would like to work with them. You might also invite the parent carer representatives on these committees to become a member of the forum.

Forums might find it helpful to invite parent carer representatives from all the different committees to meet with each other occasionally. This will provide a useful opportunity for the parent carer representatives to talk about any issues they might be experiencing in their role. It also provides an opportunity to invite parent carer representatives who

2 Working as a team 2.2 Developing the team

It will also help the steering group to identify which are the key committees and boards they want a presence on and prioritise these, see Section 4.1 Working with your local authority, and 4.2 How local health services are provided in England.