ABOUT MPCF
About Us
Welcome to MPCF
We are an independent, pan disability, parent led charity who work with (not for) the local authority, health and local services to improve services for children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and their families.
To ensure all our children have the best chance in life and receive support and services needed to reach their full potential, we work alongside Medway Council and Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board. We attend meetings, run training sessions and workshops to make sure parent carers’ voices and children’s needs are being heard, helping plan and develop the quality, range, and accessibility of services, creating better outcomes for families through participation and co-production.
We are currently funded by the Department of Education and with grants from Kent Community Foundation and National Lottery we have a family support team.
Participation and Co-production
We work together to ensure parent carers in Medway feel that their voices, their views and their experiences matter and contribute towards developing and improving services locally.
We aim to provide opportunities for our families to influence the decisions that affect them and to contribute to developing positive outcomes that meet the needs of families.
We do this by
Reaching out to parent carers to gather their views via social media, coffee mornings, events both online and in person, and surveys.
Representing parents’ experience and expertise to decision-makers by having our parent representatives attend meetings and by holding meet the professional events so parents can share their experiences
We have over 500 members from across all areas of Medway, we actively seek venues across the towns for our events, to ensure they are accessible to as many families as possible.
Family Support
Our Family Support Team can provide peer to peer support helping parents and carers to navigate local services including health, education, and social care. They can also provide support to complete forms including DLA, PIP and Universal Credit.
Meet The Team
The forum team is made up of parent carers or close family members of children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) or professionals that have experience of SEND.
Our Board of Trustees oversee the management of the Forum, with the day to day running organised by our 3 part time staff and our steering group of volunteers.
