Social Care & Short Breaks

Salford Parent Carer Forum has continued to strengthen its partnership with Children's Social Care, ensuring that the voices and lived experiences of parent carers directly influence service development and improvement. We have worked collaboratively with the Children with Disabilities Team to provide valuable parent feedback, improve communication with families, and promote a more person-centred approach to support.

A key achievement has been working alongside the new Designated Social Care Officer (DSCO) role, helping to shape how social care contributes to the SEND system and improves joint working across education, health, and social care.

Through regular strategic meetings, co-production, and open dialogue, SalfordPCF has helped build stronger relationships between families and social care services, ensuring that parent carers are recognised as equal partners in shaping services that better meet the needs of children and young people with SEND.

"You said, we did"

"There is a lack of short break provision"

We have done a lots of information gathering including surveys, focus groups and co-production sessions and we have idenified this as an area we need to work on further. Alongside the Designated Social Care Officer, the Children with Disabilities Team, and the Short Break co-ordinator, we have been exploring different options that could work for Salford.

"It takes too long to set up following an assessment"

Salford have changed providered for their PAs and the new company have been working closely with the PCF to see how we can support the recruitment of PAs for families. The new provider has agreed to attend our SEND Information to meet more parent carers, and we will support them by sharing more of their information with our members.

"We were refused an assessment despite really struggling"

The Children with Disabilities team have reveived their criteria which will make them available to more families. Alongside this, we have supported the training of the wider workforce to skill up staff when working with families with identified SEND to ensure that no matter what team you are allocated to, parent carer received the best service possible.

"They don't understand what its like - Parent Carer burnout is real"

Following a review, a number of Parent Carers worked with Social Care on developing a training course to deliver to all professionals, to ensure they fully understand the lived experience of families. The Parental Burnout training is now part of Salford's training programme and has been delived to professional from a range of services. The feedback from attendees has been overwhelmingly positive.

"We dont know what is out there"

All short break providers that are commissioned by Salford Council are invited to Salford's SEND Information Day. This enables families to meet services face to face and have discussions about whether the service is right for their child and can meet their needs.