Scots law provides powerful rights to education and support from other services, but this alone isn’t enough. The law can be complicated and difficult to understand. Even when you know what your rights are, it can be daunting, exhausting and sometimes intimidating to challenge public officials.
To help parent/carers in Scotland we produced the Accessing Public Services in Scotland Toolkit which is packed full of useful information and resources to give parents, carers and professionals the skills and knowledge they need to advocate for themselves.
We are very grateful to the RS Macdonald Charitable Trust who have awarded us a grant to fund our Accessing Public Services in Scotland Toolkit Workshops. Their generous support means that we can provide our workshops free of charge and therefore help more parents and carers to access health, social care and education support services for their child, helping them to discover a better life together.
These free workshops are run by our trained facilitators who will help families get to grips with our toolkit by showing them how to adapt the solutions and templates to their own individual circumstances and so improve parent/carer’s knowledge and confidence to challenge the decisions made by public bodies about their child’s care. The workshops have also been accredited by the CPD Certification Service.
To date there have been 68 workshops delivered on the English/Welsh version of the toolkit and feedback includes:
‘The training was very useful and highlighted to me how much I roll over when asked. I now feel empowered to be able to get those things which my son needs.’
‘Having had a bad experience my confidence had been knocked but knowing my son’s rights and how to productively move forward has inspired me. Thank you.’
If you are a Scottish parent/carer forum or work for an organisation who support families in Scotland and are interested in hosting a free workshop then please get in touch with [email protected].
