Latest News for Parents & Carers

The Partnership for Wellbeing and Mental Health in Schools has launched the Wellbeing Schools Forum, an online platform that brings education providers together to share best practice with the end goal of improving mental health and emotional wellbeing for every pupil. Sign up to the forum here.

The Universities Minister announced that a new group will be created to improve support for students with disabilities in higher education. This new group will examine the barriers faced by disabled students in higher education and improve support for them to succeed.

The Autism Drop-ins are now run by Children’s Centre Autism Champions! This drop-in service is for parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, their relatives, siblings and close friends as well as the children and young people with social communication difficulties Other agencies or services, like Umbrella, SENDIASS or STePS may attend on occasions.

The Council for Disabled Children have developed a Multi-Agency SEND Data Dashboard joining up local-level data from the web of different agencies making up the SEND system: Education, Health & Social care data all in one place.

The Tax Credit Office always assumes that a 16 year old is a school leaver during the summer. As a result, they automatically stop any tax credit payments for a young person from 1 September.
If you have a 16-19 year old who’ll be staying in school or college after the summer holidays, remember to let the Tax Credit Office know by 31 August or you could lose out.
If you have only one child you claim tax credits for, or you miss the deadline, Contact has some advice.