Introducing Forum by SENDSorta

Parent Carer Forums have an incredibly important job. Actually, they have two. To gather the experiences and views of parent carers. And then to take that evidence into co-production with local authorities and health partners to help shape better services. But underneath those two jobs sits everything else. Meetings. Minutes. Working groups. Actions. Surveys. Consultations. Members. Events. Documents. GDPR. Grants. Budgets. Expenses. Reporting. Emails. WhatsApp groups. Spreadsheets. And very quickly, the administration needed to run a Parent Carer Forum can start getting in the way of the work the forum actually exists to do. That is why we have built Forum by SENDSorta. Forum brings the work of a PCF into one place. Parent voice can be gathered and linked directly to the issues the forum is working on. Working groups can manage actions, decisions, meetings and deadlines. Funding and grants can be tracked alongside the work they are supporting. Representatives can keep a clear record of what has been raised with the local authority, what was agreed and what is still outstanding. But for me, one of the most important parts is what happens at the other end. Forum closes the loop. Too often, parents are asked for their views and never hear what happened afterwards. With Forum, parent carers can see: You told us this. We raised it here. This is what was agreed. This is what changed. And this is what happens next. That matters. Because participation should not just be about collecting feedback. It should be about showing people that their voice went somewhere. Whatever the final shape of SEND reform looks like, Parent Carer Forums are going to remain an important part of making sure the voices of families are heard. The question is whether forums have the tools and capacity to do that work at the scale that may now be required. Forum by SENDSorta has been built to help them do exactly that. You can explore the complete demo without creating an account: forum.sendsorta.co.uk #ParentCarerForums #SEND #SENDReform #CoProduction #ParentCarerVoice #SENDSorta