Cumbria Information, Advice and Support Service (formerly Cumbria Parent Partnership Service)

Main information

Type of service: Parent partnerships, Parent partnerships, Family support and information services

Cumbria Information, Advice & Support Service (formerly Cumbria Parent Partnership Service) offers up to date information, impartial advice and practical support to parents/carers of children with special educational needs or severe medical conditions (disabilities), which affect the way their child can access education. This support now includes signposting to health and social care advisory services. Cumbria Information, Advice & Support Service staff will make sure that parents/carers of all children (0-25 years old) with additional needs have access to information, advice and support. Confidential and impartial support is offered to parents/carers so they can make informed decisions about their child's education. Generally we can offer information, advice and support around education issues, although we can signpost parents on, with their permission, to other agencies who can help with different problems such as benefit claims. Your child may have learning difficulties caused by: A physical disability; A problem with sight, hearing or speech; Difficulties with reading, writing, speaking or mathematics work; Emotional or behavioural problems; and A learning difficulty. These are just examples; your child may have more general difficulties with school work. How we can support you: We can offer support around education issues to parents and carers who believe their child has special educational needs or a disability. You do not need to have a medical diagnosis of your child's needs to ask us for help or to use our service, but on your first contact with us you will be asked to describe how your child's difficulties impact on their education as this will help us to know how best we can support you. You just need to provide us, in your own words, with a picture of how your child's needs affect their life at home, in nursery/school/college and in the community. The children and young people whose parents we support have needs spanning a very wide range, including those who have emotional needs (maybe vulnerable to bullying and lacking in self-esteem), behavioural needs (perhaps diagnosed as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism spectrum disorder (ASD), or arising through other causes), medical needs (through a medical condition such as chromosomal conditions or epilepsy), physical needs (such as cerebral palsy or degenerative muscular conditions), sensory needs (hearing or sight difficulties), learning needs (frequently associated with other difficulties such as Down's syndrome or ASD), or social interaction difficulties (usually associated with ASD and related conditions such as attachment disorder). Ages of the children range from 0-25 years old. We can offer you practical support to: understand the different ways the school should support your child; build and maintain a good working relationship with school staff; be fully involved in decisions made about your child's education; resolve problematic situations; make a complaint to the school governors when a difficult situation is unable to be resolved; understand and set in motion statutory processes where your child has very high level needs; ensure that you are informed about and involved in those processes; access independent appeals where other means of resolving disagreement have been exhausted; resolve issues around school exclusion; and with other education-related issues. We offer support ranging from a single telephone helpline call to listen and talk through the difficulties you are experiencing, to in-depth face-to-face support at meetings or to complete paperwork relating to education issues. Some parents contact us just occasionally, to ask about something that has arisen in school, while others remain in close contact over a long period of time, perhaps having individual support from a caseworker for up to a year. Parents can come back to us again and again - in fact we rather like to hear how things are going.

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