Service Spotlight
This month’s Service Spotlight is a conversation between myself and Brian O’Hagan, Director of Reaching Families. Keep reading to find all the great work they do to support parent cares and their plans for 2022.
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Keir: Could you describe what Reaching Families does?
Brian: Our mission is to empower, inform, and support parent carers of children and young people with SEND in West Sussex. We do this by providing information, training, and peer support through a range of services. For instance, we have recently published a new edition of our parent carer guide ‘Making Sense of It All’, which is now a combined version of the previous edition of ‘Making Sense of It All’ and ‘Making Sense of Adult Like’. It’s now one bumper book, it's about 400 pages, that goes from diagnosis to adult life for someone with SEND. It covers what kind of things to expect and getting those initial first benefits (DLA right through to when you transition to PIP), going to school and getting the support you need for your child at school, right through to transitioning to college. It's there for you as a companion and when you've got a question or issue you can refer to the book.
Keir: How can people get a hold of a copy?
Brian: People can order a physical copy or download it from our website. The book has no cost but there is a £2.50 charge for postage, or people can download an electronic copy from our website, which works really well on tablets or kindles as you can leave bookmarks and etc on useful sections.
We also have 50 factsheets available on our website on a whole range of topics and tend to be a bit more focused on topics or conditions whereas the book ‘Making Sense of It All’ is more general.
This year we're going to be delivering something like 63 training workshops which comes out at about 100 sessions over the year, making this our busiest year to date. They cover a variety of topics such as benefits, EHCP’s and behaviour. To help with these we get professionals, as well as parent carers, from different organisations for instance the SENDIAS Service in West Sussex will help deliver training on the EHCP process.
There is also our befriending service. Where we match a trained volunteer with a parent carer of a child who are either just about to or are going through the diagnosis process. The volunteer can help with their emotional response to the situation and the parent can learn from the life experience of someone who has already been through it all. Then there is the more practical side of things, which would be helping them with things like information signposting, how to access services, and crucially how to connect with other parents.
We've got 4 support groups, Littlehampton, Worthing, Billingshurst and an online group we started because of the pandemic which has been very helpful to families, so we are continuing it.
Finally, we have a very big Facebook group where parent carers can connect, share experiences, and ask each other questions in a closed group. This is supplemented buy our news page which we use to keep people update to date with what’s happening at Reaching Families.
Keir: How long is reaching families been running for?
Brian: We have been around since 2008.
Keir: What is your favourite part of being part of reaching families?
Brian: From my personal point of view, I just get a real thrill from developing new work. When we get ideas to develop services and watching that unfold. Watching an idea become a reality is just hugely exciting for me.
Seeing the impact as well, that's the ultimate measure. When we do our evaluation at the end of the year and we get to see the impact it gives me a great feeling. That and the fact that I feel I'm really fortunate. I've got a really great team, and great colleagues and they are all really committed to the work we do.
Keir: Do you have any special plans for 2020?
Brian: We do, in part thanks to additional funding from Care Commissioning Groups’. We are going to be expanding our training delivery. Last year for example, I think we did something like 36 individual workshops, this year it's 63.
Then another major development is we've just secured funding to develop a new benefit service for parent carers. We've been awarded a three-year grant to deliver a multi layered service, so it's going to be awareness raising, signposting, information, training and crucially, someone to help with editing applications for DLA and PIP.
Keir: That last bit is something that has been really missed since the benefits adviser at the County Council retired hasn’t it?
Brian: Yeah, there has been a hole in that regard, but our new service will fill that space and I think it is going to be really useful for families. Especially with helping to manage the stress that can come with the process and worries about increasing costs of living. We are hoping to launch this in the early part of Spring this year and information on how to access it will be available on our website.
Keir: What is the best way for people to find out more about what you do?
Brian: The best place to start is our website and I would recommend joining our Facebook groups. We have two, Reaching Families News (where you can keep up to date with Reaching Families) and a private group for parents called Reaching Families.
Keir: Reaching Families also do a great job of keeping the Local Offer Events Section up to date with all their workshops they organise.
 
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