Parent carer engagement toolkit for schools

Engaging with parents is an everyday and important aspect of school life. Schools routinely work with and consult parents in a range of ways and for a variety of reasons. Developing a positive and trusting relationship with their parent community is a key focus for any school, irrespective of setting type or learners’ ages.

Parent carers of children and young people with SEND have said that they can feel isolated and on the edge of the wider school community. This toolkit has been developed to help support schools to build positive relationships with their parents and carers of children with SEND. It includes a range of ideas, practical examples, and tools to help schools to develop their parent carer engagement and most importantly, to help them to support and enable their parent carers to be fully involved.

It is designed to help schools reflect on their current practice and think about how they engage with parent carers and how that differs from the whole school population. It is about developing strategies and approaches and encourages schools to involve their parent carer community in developing their engagement plan moving forwards.

This guide is an example of what can be achieved by working together, it has been co-produced with colleagues from schools, Families in Partnership - parent carer forum, members of the Parent/carer Stakeholder Group, SENDIASS and Worcestershire SEND Services. All the parties involved have been able to contribute to the advice, ideas, and ethos, and have gained from the experience:

‘I am excited by the ideas and examples of good practice included in this toolkit. I’m looking forward to working with my child’s school to look at ways we can involve parent carers and see some of these ideas in action.’ A parent carer of a SEND child in a Worcestershire primary school

‘It’s been really great being involved with this project, the toolkit is brilliant and we, as a school, will definitely be using it.’ The SENCO at The Coppice Primary School and Nursery

Download: Engaging with Parent Carers - A free toolkit for Worcestershire Schools (PDF)

Following the launch of the toolkit we have received feedback from schools regarding the resources contained in the appendix and also the Quality Standards framework, which can be found on pages 38 to 44. Schools have said they have found them useful, but would like them in a downloadable, editable format so they could use them more effectively in school. These have been added below.

We also have plans to update and refresh the toolkit in 2025, using information we have gained from its usage over the last two years.