Shropshire Self Evaluation Framework: A Parent Carer Perspective, the Other Half of the Story

02/12/2024

Shropshire Council produced their Self Evaluation Framework document in Summer 2024 with a view to describe what SEND looks and feels like in Shropshire at the mioment, and how the system is responding to this. PACC representatives participated in a series of workshops hosted by a consultant to support the development of the initial draft document in 2023. This initial draft had significant gaps and had recieved poor engagement from system partners, so the project was extended and another person was responsible for reviewing and compiling the information into what has been presented by the system to date.

Whilst opportunities to contribute to this next phase of the development of this work were made available to partners and community representatives, this was no longer a fully coproduced project (as far as PACC would describe coproduction). As a result, we feel that our contributions had been omited in places or not fully considered and lacked the impact we had intended. We must point out that some of our representations are visible and articulated well to describe what families had shared with us, but these were limited.

We decided to write up our feedback and that of families across Shropshire and have produced "Shropshire Self Evaluation Framework: A Parent Carer Perspective, the Other Half of the Story" as a report.

We hope that our reflections and representations of what families have shared with us can go on to influence positive change in the system. We have been using this report, and many others, as the basis of our representations across strategic and operational meetings and hope to see an impact of this across a number of areas of work in time.