Dingley's Promise: Driving an Inclusion Movement in Partnership with Parent Carers

Dingley’s Promise is a registered charity which has been operating for over 41 years. It offers specialist Nursery provision with the aim of supporting young children with SEND into mainstream provision wherever possible. The charity
developed a hugely successful and impactful training program during lockdown and as a result applied for Comic Relief funding to roll out workforce development across selected local authorities to both bring about change and evidence the act of that change and campaign nationally.

In 2021 the charity was successful in securing Comic Relief funding to work with 32 local authority areas to offer 10 online training courses to the entire early years workforce locally (all those working with children and families as well as early years
settings from pre-birth to 5).

Working in partnership with parent carers was a central theme throughout the project to both ensure the project remained relevant, and supported parent carers to
play an active part in the project’s success. The key aim of the parent engagement strand of the project was to support parent (or demand) led change as we know that this is the biggest lever of change in the early years sector.

The objectives of the overall inclusion project have been to improve the sufficiency of early years and childcare places through upskilling the workforce. The parent carer strand formed a critical plank by:

• Creating regular forums to listen to the experiences of parent carers and act on what was shared
• Enabling parent-on-parent support across all the areas worked with
• Ensuring representation at the project’s national steering group
• Representing the views of parent carers in the project implementation planning in each of the areas taking part
• Raising awareness of the training offer amongst other parents and early years practitioners locally
• Ensuring the voice of parent carers and their families was central in all project activities

Dingley’s Promise worked with consultant Ann Van Dyke MBE to lead on parent carer engagement. The project created a project outline and role profile for any parent carers interested and then worked with each area involved to support the recruitment of parent carer representatives.

The role profile was designed to be friendly and inviting and take pressure off anybody interested in taking part. It describes what the project would do to support parent carers, as well as a list of ways in which they could participate (stressing that how far they engage is entirely up to them and their capacity).

LAs recruited parent carer representatives from a range of different avenues as typically parent carer councils/forums tend to have families of older children represented and are often very busy focusing on issues for school age children.

Whilst each area’s parent carer forum/council was engaged in the process, representatives were often recruited from those working directly with families, for example portage staff, family support workers and early years settings.

Once a parent carer expressed an interest in finding out more, they were emailed a welcome message with a description of the project and role profile. They were also invited to informal and very friendly induction sessions to meet Ann and hear more about the project. As time went on other parent representatives often joined these induction meetings too.

Bimonthly parent carer check-ins were offered online to bring representatives from all areas together to have an update on how the project was doing and share what they were doing to drive training take up and parent engagement locally. These meetings also held dedicated time for parents to share their own experiences and support each other with their own challenges.

Over time the parent carers reshaped support, adding a Face Book group for the representatives to share ideas and support, offering support to each other and reshaping the format and style of meetings.

The impact of the overall project has been to reach almost 30,000 practitioners nationally (at the time of writing) with 96% of those who complete it consistently reporting they can take more children with SEND as a result.
The parent carers who engaged with the process have been part of areas with the highest training engagement. Their activities far exceeded the expectations of the project and included;

•  Using social media to promote the training and engage families
• Recruiting other parents and carers to promote the training
• Attending local planning meetings to drive training engagement in the area
• “Mystery shopping” of local early years providers, finding out if they had done the training
• Calling and visiting settings and schools to promote the training
• Building relationships with local mosques to promote the training
• Attending and presenting at local network meetings
• Sharing their own personal experiences of exclusion at webinars
• Joining the charity at Westminster to celebrate successes
• Creating networks of parent carers by facilitating coffee mornings and drop ins

The parent carers themselves also report that being a parent carer of a young child with SEND can be utterly overwhelming. Navigating a diagnosis, a whole new language and system of assessments and support can be extremely challenging to process and often very isolating as well. Those who took part regularly report that they feel lifted and empowered to be part of positive change as opposed to purely being on the end of a struggling system.

Parent carers who took part and accessed the training themselves reported that knowing what good inclusive practice looks like empowered them to have an informed conversation with their setting and work with them to jointly support their child’s needs in an inclusive environment, as well as promoting the training.

Whilst local authorities often struggled to recruit parent carers, this was often due to resource and capacity locally to do so. Where LAs dedicated a key role or part of roles to recruitment they were then able engage with a range of stakeholders to reach and engage parent carers.

Monitoring engagement and impact as part of wider childcare sufficiency and inclusion delivery can make sure a focus is maintained.

Relationships were key and those who identify and support children with SEND are often best placed to know if parent carers are interested or have capacity to
consider taking part.

Keeping parent carer forums and councils engaged can sometimes lead to a renewed focus on early years and in some area a new sub group establishing.

Empowering parent carers and working in partnership with them has without doubt supported the projects aim and resulted in more training take up. Participation in network meetings and webinars to share the lived experience has often brought the project to life and support practitioners to engage.

Facilitating parental demand (ie helping parents to know what good looks like and ask for it) drives change in the early years sector and is one of the biggest and most successful market management levers we have.

Whilst the Comic Relief funded project finishes in June 26 the legacy of parent engagement remains and in several areas the approach will now become part of the local Best Start and Family Hub delivery.

Dingley’s will also continue to work in partnership with parent cares throughout all it’s work.