What is a Parent Partnership Service?

Parent Partnership Services (PPS) offer confidential and impartial information, advice and support to parents and carers of children with special educational needs. Watch the videos below to find out more about what Parent Partnership Services do:

What is the Devon Parent Partnership Service?

The Devon Parent Partnership Service (DPPS) is an impartial, independent and confidential service. We support parents/carers of children 0-19 years old who have additional educational needs or who are concerned that their child may have learning, health or social care issues that may be hindering educational development. The service is free to parents.

We are independent but work closely with the Local Authority, schools, health, social services, other agencies and the voluntary sector.

We offer training opportunities for parents, schools and other professionals.

Who is in the team?

There are five Parent Partnership Officers (PPOs) within the Devon Parent Partnership Service. Each PPO is responsible for an area of Devon and works with a small team of volunteer Independent Parental Supporters (IPS). The Parent Partnership Liaison Officer manages the Service and we are all supported by an administration assistant. See our contact information.

Sue	Georgie	Liz

Debbie	Cath	Melissa	Trish

Leanne and Vanessa have recently joined our team, which means we are able to expand our service to you. Vanessa will enhance the level of support we can give through our enquiry line and Leanne’s role centres around developing support to enable parents to navigate their way through the new Pathfinder developments. The addition of Leanne and Vanessa means that we now have the opportunity to offer support across Education, Health and Social Care for parents who have children/young people aged 0-25 years.

Vanessa	Leanne

Mission, vision and values

Our mission

• To provide accurate and impartial support and information to parent/carers whose children may have additional educational needs
• To ensure that parent/carers’ views are heard and understood
• To make sure that parent/carers understand their rights, roles and responsibilities
• To work with staff and governing bodies in schools and a range of other settings, as well as across the Local Authority and other agencies, to develop parent friendly policies and partnership working with parent/carers

Our vision

• To provide a high quality, impartial and confidential service to support children, families and carers and empower parent/carers to play an informed and active part in their child’s education
• To contribute to embedding partnership working with parent/carers across all schools, agencies and other settings through a programme of training and information exchange that focuses on the achievement of positive outcomes for children, young people and their families, in line with Every Child Matters and the Devon Children and Young People’s Plan.

Our values

• Quality: We will have an unswerving commitment to high quality
• Partnership: We can best achieve our goals through collaboration: we will work with parent/carers and partner organisations in a positive and impartial way to support the achievement of the ECM 5 outcomes
• Equity: We will champion the right of all parent/carers and their children to equitable treatment

What can we do?

Inform parents:

• about Special Educational Needs
• about the full range of options available
• about other services, support groups and voluntary organisations
• about the roles of other professionals

Support parents:

• at meetings with schools, the LA & other professionals
• to write letters and fill in forms
• by explaining the meaning of official documents
• with the statutory assessment process
• by listening to your concerns
• to find the right person to contact
• in developing good communication between you, the school and other services
• with appeals
• during the Common Assessment Framework process

Train:

• parents/carers, school governors, learning support assistants and other professionals
• on many aspects of special educational needs, statutory procedures and responsibilities
• through tailor-made packages for groups

See more on our training page.

Confidentiality:

The Devon Parent Partnership Service is a confidential service. To ensure this we:

• only take referrals directly from parents and carers (or from professionals with the permission of the parent/carer)
• will only contact people and other agencies if you know about this and agree to it
• will only send letters that you have agreed  for us to send
• have a dedicated enquiry line