Zoom Chat at 10am – 11.30am (latest) on Thursday 28 September
What do you need from Community Provision for your SEND children and family? Children’s Quarter – the co-operative that represents the largest section of Community Provision in Birmingham – wants your views, ideas and offers to coproduce even better services. Please join us on 28 September for a Zoom conversation informed by parents from across the city who are taking part in community lunches in August at which we are asking: What Community Provision do you need?
Children’s Quarter bring togethers: community groups, charities, arts and sports groups, schools and special schools. We collectively deliver Fit for All and Fit for You programmes that provide thousands of places on school holiday activities in Birmingham and North Solihull. Our members do more – independently – throughout the year:
- making welcome spaces for SEND children at locations across every district of the city
- promoting inclusive access to further spaces and services
- providing inclusive playschemes, youth clubs, arts and sports groups.
We want to know how we can make more services together? What do parents and families want to do and how can we help? What are your thoughts for growing the Community Provision around SEND children and families in Birmingham?
All CQ Member groups are part of their communities in one way or other. Many are community groups set up originally by parents who found that local provision for disabled children wasn’t good enough. That meant our children – outside school – being excluded. Tackling the problem in practical terms, our parents set up playschemes and youth clubs as well as continuing to campaign for a better deal from the council and the rest of the statutory sector.
We want your views on getting the balance right between providing inclusive services ourselves and encouraging and cajoling statutory and private sector bodies to do a better job. And what’s most useful to you – a service on your doorstep, or lots of choice across the city? What’s the best balance between providing services and enabling networks of parents to get together and make their own?
We’re listening against a background of yet more cuts in services and in potential changes, for example, to Short Breaks in Birmingham. If that raises issues for you, come and join us for a chat on Thursday 28 September at 10am. The conversation will go on 90 minutes maximum but you can dip in out as needed. You taking part, helps us make better Community Provision and get more resources behind it.
Book your place at the event now and we’ll circulate the link you can join with on 28th plus some short notes about what parents have already been saying, a week or so before the meeting: