The Plymouth Parent Partnership (PPP) provides an information exchange and support service for all parents and service providers in the city. Within that universal service, it also fulfils the statutory duty of the Local Authority to provide information and support for parents of children with SEN (see para. 4 below). It does so in a context that emphasises their commonalities with other parents and families. It recognises the views some of those parents have expressed for a service that is not seen to marginalise their interests or to in any way attach stigma to being a parent of a child with SEN. The service follows Plymouth City Council policies for equality and diversity, social inclusion, and planning to meet the needs of children and young people as set out in Every Child Matters and the Children Act 2004. The service has been closely involved with the development of the city's Parent & Family Support strategy and has broadened many of its functions in line with that strategy.

The service has built upon the broader roles for Parent Partnership services recognised as possibilities in the DfES guidance for core and extension activities. Descriptions of the nature of these kinds of activities can be found in the DfES SEN Code of Practice (2001) and the SEN Toolkit. Plymouth Parent Partnership has added ingredients for working in a range of other ways to develop best practice in an information exchange and support service that is relevant for all parents and families, including families of children with additional needs/disabilities, and all agencies in integrated children's services. It takes seriously the two-way aspects of information exchange and gives practical and strategic respect to the views that parents express. Parents can play a key role to represent the interests and voice of their children and families and can help shape appropriate children's services at every level. The service has developed a Parent Participation strategy for the city that includes the regular meetings of the Plymouth Parent & Family Forum. (See Section Seven)

The service was restructured in 2003 to be a universal service and has followed the guidance for the development of work in the field of Information, Advice, Support, Guidance and Learning for parents. Key documents have included: Removing Barriers to Learning 2003, Support for Parents: the Best Start for Children 2005; Parenting Support: Guidance for Local Authorities 2006; Every Parent Matters, 2006; Reaching Out: Think Family, 2007; Quality Matters: think Family, 2007; the Children's Plan, 2007; Aiming High for Disabled Children: better support for families, May 2007. PPP now manages many projects delivering support to parents and impacting upon all areas of the city - these are detailed later in this document.

All Local Authorities (LAs) in England have a statutory duty to ensure that a Parent Partnership Service (PPS) is provided for parents. The DfES set out in the 2001 Code of Practice for SEN (Special Educational Needs) its expectations for the minimum standards to be met in such a service. Parent Partnership Services may be provided directly as an in-house service by the LA, contracted to an independent voluntary organisation, or achieved by some combination of the two. To ensure parental confidence, the DfES guidance stated that LAs should ensure that in-house services are run at `arm's length' so that information and advice given to parents is demonstrably impartial and neutral.

In 2007, the DCSF published exemplifications of the minimum standards for Parent Partnership Services and Local Authorities as laid out in the SEN Code of Practice. This exemplifications document sets out guidance about the key features necessary for Parent Partnership Services (`Parent Partnership Services - increasing parental confidence: Exemplification of minimum standards for PPS and Local Authorities, DCSF, 2007'). Plymouth's Parent Partnership has matched or gone beyond the levels indicated in the exemplars for meeting the indicated standards. 2007 also saw the publication of the revised `Guidance on monitoring service delivery and assessing the impact of Parent Partnership Services', by the National Parent Partnership Network, National Association of Parent Partnership Staff, and The Regional Partnerships. PPP has monitoring arrangements in place that have anticipated this guidance and approaches to evaluating the impact of the service.

The interpretation of `arm's length' is important and parents should be reassured that the management and function of a Parent Partnership Service can remain independent from, and impartial to, the agendas of any interested party, be they Local Authority, agencies in any sector, parent pressure group or individual parents, for the information that is given to parents or others. This issue is expanded in Section Four of this service description.

The impartiality policy of PPP is set out as Appendix A to this document. It is enhanced by the description of service structure and function in this document.

The Plymouth Parent Partnership (PPP) is managed as an in-house but `arm's length' service of the LA. The service is structured to maximise its independence and its ability to offer impartial and neutral information, advice and support to parents. The LA seeks best practice in its relationship to the PPP to ensure it is sufficiently independent of the LA to be impartial but has a close enough relationship to contribute to the development of LA policy and practice.

The PPP follows national guidance and peer review via the South West Regional Parent Partnership Network and the National Parent Partnership Network. It demonstrates best practice in conveying its `arm's length' status by: being located separately from Local Authority offices at Windsor House: ensuring a separate identity is maintained in all published information materials in paper form or on its web-site; specifying the need for impartiality in all job descriptions used for paid and voluntary staff; and in being monitored by a multi-sectorial Development Group whose terms of reference specifically call for `arm's length' status to be continually reviewed as set out later in this document (see Section 8).

Plymouth's Department for Services to Children and Young People line manages the PPP within its Learner and Family Support branch, and via its Community Psychology Services. Integral to its development as a universal service, PPP must fulfil the Authority's duty to ensure that the PPP meets the statutory minimum standards of quality and any additional voluntary quality standards agreed by the Authority. Importantly, these standards now include the South West Regional Parent Partnership Network (SWRPPN) Standards (revised 2007) that Plymouth City Council has agreed to follow since 2004. These include and expand upon the DCSF minimum standards. The service also follows the 14 principles for quality in services to parents that are set out in Plymouth's Parent and Family Support Strategy (2007).

The PPP is managed by a Senior Educational Psychologist within the Plymouth Community Psychology Services. This is a full-time post allocated to PPP. For the majority of the time since 1994 there has been an educational psychologist with some time allocated to act as LA support leader to the PPP, both when it was managed in its pilot phase by the LEA and later, until 2003, by a voluntary sector organisation. The PPP from 2003 was intentionally not managed by the Special Services section of the LEA to avoid conflict of interests arising for LA officers regarding provision for special needs / disabilities, and also to recognise PPP's universality for all parents. The professional identity and code of practice for an educational psychologist is felt to offer resilience in maintaining neutrality across stakeholder demands. It also offers an understanding of the needs of parents, experience of multi-agency agendas and mediating between them, and a thorough knowledge of relevant legislation, policies and practice around special and additional needs in meeting the statutory element of the service contracted.

In Plymouth, the Senior Educational Psychologist managing the PPP is also the Local Authority Officer with responsibility for ensuring its involvement in strategic development of services to schools, parents, children and families, its performance, its fulfilment of national and regional standards of quality in service delivery, and the maintenance of its arms' length status and its impartiality. This arrangement indicates the Local Authority's genuine support for its Parent Partnership service and the Authority's collaborative approach to change and development in services to children and families, including schools and other agencies. It ensures that PPP is welcomed as the practical and impartial vehicle for parents' views to be heard at every level.

Recognising the factors that can lead to people constructing different understandings of the same event. Examples could be:

To seek to resolve any conflict between the views of the school, the Local Authority or the parent, rather than to promote any of them.

To understand that a series of unplanned and unintended events (examples could be school / other agency staff absence, failure in telephone / email systems / postal delays, need for urgent prioritisation of other things, etc.) can conspire to convince a parent that the `system' is against them.

To support parents, individually or collectively, to convey their views to schools, the Local Authority and other agencies.

To differentiate between advocacy, representation and information exchange. We interpret advocacy to be promoting / defending a particular point of view relative to others being expressed. PPP advocates only for parent participation in general and promotes and supports structures that enable representatives to convey collective views from parents. It does not act as advocate for any individual parent or act to represent an individual parent's views.

To support best practice in information exchange and supporting individual parents to ensure their views are understood by others and vice versa. This kind of support can include conveying the views of an individual parent / carer, at their request, with their permission and with content agreed beforehand, should they feel unable to speak in a meeting they are attending where we are supporting them. We would however always encourage parents to voice their own views. In cases where our staff voiced the views of a parent / carer we would overtly check immediately afterward that we had captured what they wished us to convey.

To recognise that confidentiality is a permissive phenomenon and that proactive, impartial exploration with a parent about which information can be shared can be constructive and effective in achieving solutions.

To both support parents and, as part of that process, to offer constructive challenge to perceptions of some events.

To understand that separating or separated parents may hold very partial views of events compared to each other.

To recognise that parents facing court proceedings, stressful procedures or meetings may present extremely partial perceptions.

To be authentic and honest in working with parents, not only listening and agreeing, but maintaining a well-informed reality frame from which to inform parents' choice and planning.

To avoid over-identification between a parent's situation or dilemmas and one's own personal experience.

Training and supervision of staff, including observed practice, that explores all of the points in this section and includes looking at many examples of practice where impartiality has informed or underpinned the impact achieved.

Transparency about the relationship of the PPP and the Local Authority, as set out in Section One of the PPP Service Description. Since 2003, when the PPP was restructured to be a within-house arm's length service of the Local Authority, there has been agreement about anticipating and avoiding conflict between the Authority and PPP in its delivery of service. Section Three of the PPP Service Description has remained substantively the same since that date, with only minor amendments to reflect the changed landscape for integrated Children's Services and changing terminology.

The PPP is located to avoid any adverse perceptions of its impartiality. It is away from the Authority's main base at Windsor House and is based on two sites. The main base, with its own separate accommodation, is at Martinsgate (predominantly Adult & Community Learning and Further Education building with city centre open access). The second, is at the Treasury Building in Catherine Street and is currently the only service in that building. Longcause Oasis Centre and John Kitto Community College, also host the PPP two resource bases for parents where books, DVDs and other information materials are available for loan to parents or those working with parents.

PPP has its clear service identity, its own logo, its own direct URL web-site, and provides a comprehensive range of publications to inform parents, including a directory of services for parents and families.

PPP has created a range of strategic vehicles to enable parents' views to influence the development of service to families, and leads the city's strategic approach to parent participation. It is responsible for the Plymouth Parent & Family Forum that meets bi-monthly and at which a wide range of parent representatives meet with service providers and commissioners. PPP ensures that the full range of parents views is heard through the Forum, through Parent Reference groups that inform the City's Parent & Family Support Strategy and the Integrated Disability Service, through support to parent members of working groups, interview panels and other channels (see Sections 7 and 8 of the PPP Service Description).

PPP is accountable to its multi-sectorial Development Group for its development of service performance, direction and assessment of performance. This is not a management group, but has an essential role in ensuring the arms-length status of the service (see Section 8 of the PPP Service Description). From its inception in 2003 its terms of reference have focussed on monitoring the impartiality of the service, including parents' perceptions of the identity of the service in all its interactions with parents, schools, other agencies and the Local Authority. It is chaired by a parent. Membership and decision-taking arrangements ensure a balance between parent and professional views.

As explained in section 10 of the service description, the evaluation form that is sent to parents contacting the core team includes a question about the level of impartiality perceived by the parent in the service they receive.

Parents and carers seeking information and support from Plymouth Parent Partnership (PPP) will be given the assurance that their enquiry will be treated in confidence.

Any information that a parent / carer may disclose, other than that which raise child protection issues or civil safety issues, will not be passed to schools, Plymouth City Council or any other person without prior consent of the parent. This policy will apply to all contact with parents whether it is individual or group work involving disclosure of personal information.

Parents / carers should be encouraged to share relevant information with school staff, other services or individuals when it is in the best interests of the parent / carers or of their child to do so. Confidentiality should be interpreted as a facilitative structure to ensure parent / carers do not feel disempowered in discussing issues for which they want support, not as an assumption that information given is best kept secret.

It is also considered good practice to ensure that maintaining confidentiality is not interpreted by service users to indicate or imply agreement or collusion with the service user's beliefs or positioning. Good practice might involve setting boundaries for the views being shared by the service user, making it clear, for example that subjective or unsubstantiated serious allegations against named staff in schools, PCC departments, other agencies, or other individuals, may need to be addressed in meetings with those concerned. Staff should be clear in the face of such allegations that they may feel uncomfortable to accept the information without needing to arrange to discuss the issues with those named and with the parent / carer. It is sometimes necessary to ask the parent / carer to refrain from expressing further such views until such a meeting can be arranged (and it may be advisable to have notes taken at that meeting that are available to the parents and others attending).

Plymouth City Council's Services for Children and Young people sees the ownership of all information and records concerning parents making contact with PPP to lie with the PPP. Personal details of parents or their child (names, addresses etc.) will not be included in any data that may be requested to monitor and audit service use, except with their informed consent. Anonymised data will be used to inform such audits.

Paid and voluntary staff may be asked to take notes when supporting a parent at a meeting or may make notes while supporting an individual parent. All written information relating to the service's work with parents is the property of the Plymouth Parent Partnership. Such notes will be offered to parents / carers as a record of the meeting, capturing key points relevant to parent / carer needs. They should not be used as, or be seen to have the status of, formal minutes of a meeting. If the chair of a meeting requests that such notes may be used as minutes of the meeting, then PPP staff must make clear that this is only possible with the permission of the parent and with an acceptance that their primary purpose is as given in the underlined sentence in this paragraph. This does not preclude the need for more general notes / minutes to be taken that are made available to all attendees, and, if the parent does not consent to PPP staff notes being broadened to fulfil that role, then another person may also need to take separate notes.

In most instances, paid and voluntary staff must regard all contacts with parents as confidential. This means that nothing a parent says may be passed on to another person outside of the organisation without prior consent of the parent. It is important to be aware of respecting the needs of all people we are in contact with.

Information must be made available within PPP, if it is relevant to the work of the organisation. There are times when a volunteer or member of staff may need to discuss parent's confidences with particular individuals within the service. This will be quite appropriate when, for example, seeking internal information or advice. When seeking advice or information from outside the service on behalf of the parent, the parent's permission must be given. Paid and voluntary staff should explain, on initial contact with parents, that any information apart from that which may raise child protection issues or civil safety issues, will remain within the organisation.

Only in exceptional circumstances would it be necessary to pass on confidences outside the service. The law requires that in matters of considerable risk to children, the above rules be waived i.e. Child Protection Issues.

If a volunteer or member of staff is told of actual abuse of a child, or they are told of suspected child abuse by a third party, or they themselves suspect it, they should:

It is possible that a parent, themselves aged 18 or over, may disclose information about being abused themselves as a child. This may or may not have been addressed by agencies involved in the past. Such disclosure may be accompanied by distress and it is important not to put pressure on the parent for any specific immediate course of action. If the abuse in the past has not been disclosed previously, and if no action has previously been taken to address the abuse, staff should establish the parent's wishes for any help with retrospective reporting.

The service has a responsibility to provide, as far as possible, a safe environment to staff, volunteers and service users and confidentiality may need to be broken when illegal activity threatens that safety. This may include persons making active threats to harm, physically or mentally, another person using our service or any other service associated with it and who is not willing to moderate their behaviour. It would certainly be justified if acts of a sexually abusive or violent nature have occurred or where the threat of such occurring is believed to be a serious one.

The same overall principles, as set out above, applies. No personal information will be made available to any other persons or agencies without the informed consent of the parent / carer. PPP uses the CSS (Children's Support Services) module of the PCC Capita One information system. This includes, for other services, a notification of service use being indicated to those with access to the database the name of any caseworker involved with a named child or young person's name. There is an agreed protocol with PCC Department for Services to Children and Young People data managers that notification of a parent or carer having been in contact with PPP will not be made on the shared database unless the parent has specifically given their informed consent that this can happen or where there are child protection issues identified. All paid and voluntary staff making contact with parents about individual casework will explain this protocol. The guidance protocol is attached as Appendix H.

The recording, storage and sharing of confidential information by PSAs in the Plymouth's PSA pilot project during 2006-2008 has helped increase our understanding for this aspect of PSA work. The following paragraphs reflect that experience and our consultations with PSAs and representatives from Head teachers associations.

Service Level Agreements with schools specify that for PSAs' work with individual parents / carers this PPP confidentiality policy applies. Again, it is important to state that parents / carers should be encouraged to share their information with school staff, other services or individuals when it is in the best interests of the parent / carers or of their child to do so. There are many kinds of personal information where it is not necessary or appropriate to encourage such sharing - this will call for professional decision by the PSA. It is also important that PSAs are aware of, and sensitive to, any confidentiality policy that the school already has in place and discuss with their line manager any anticipated areas of difficulty. The practice guidance in Paragraphs 3 and 4 of this policy should be followed by PSAs.

Understanding confidentiality and holding information can sometimes place PSAs in situations where they might experience conflicts of loyalty, uncertainty about appropriate sharing, and on occasion facing pressure to share information. It is important that other school staff are given a clear explanation of the PSA role and the policy on confidentiality in their working practice. It is important also that PSAs recognise that in professional supervision sessions it can be helpful to seek guidance on information they are holding when the supervision session itself is bound by confidentiality. There is clear guidance for the Children's Services workforce in the document Information Sharing: Practitioners Guide, Integrated working to improve outcomes for children and young people, Every Child Matters Change for Children, 2006, DCSF.

The breaking of confidentiality where child protection and safety issues are involved, as set out in sections 9 -12 above, calls for PSAs to report to their school's Child Protection Coordinator. If a PSA is told of actual abuse of a child, or they are told of suspected child abuse by a third party, or they themselves suspect it, they should:

There is a need to establish clearly protocols in individual schools for what access the PSA will have to other confidential records about children and families that the school holds. Many, but not all, PSAs may have full access to paper and electronic information held by schools about pupils. Again, it is important that school staff are aware of the PSA role and that they may not be in a position to share with other school staff information they have been given by parents.

This confidentiality policy relates to the content of information given to PSAs by parents and, as set out in paragraph 13, to the identification by name of parents as service users. The latter is not always easily achievable in school settings and experience in the pilot indicates that the majority of head teachers and PSAs operate on a basis of mutual trust and respect for `need to know' principles. It is essential however to understand that this policy is not intended to act as a barrier to PSAs keeping their line managers fully informed of the type of activities they are carrying out in their work. It is good practice for a PSA to keep accurate records of their work by category, with individual or group casework being anonymised to avoid identifying service users by name. Similarly, it is reasonable for line managers to expect a PSA to forward plan their distribution of future work by category to include casework, group support and training, meetings, promotions, school / agency liaison, own training and development etc. This kind of differentiation of information, maintaining confidentiality for individual parents while providing information about the activities and tasks undertaken by the PSA is necessary to enable Head teachers to monitor and manage the work of the PSA.

It is essential that PSAs have secure storage arrangements for confidential information. This includes a lockable filing cabinet or similar for paper information for which the PSA is the keyholder and a password protected laptop or desktop computer for which only the PSA holds the password. Information that parents have given permission to be shared with school staff should be copied for inclusion in the school's child records, unless it is to be restricted to only specifically named staff members. Some PSAs in the pilot have identified difficulties with confidentiality with emails via the school email address. This is not always an easy issue to overcome and we can only advise confidential messages being sent as attachments rather than first text, with a `confidential' warning in the subject heading.

Confidential information shared with a PSA is shared with that professional role rather than with the individual person. When a named PSA leaves their post the information should be available to the next PSA as postholder to enable continuity of working with individual parents. It is good practice to explain this to parents and, if at all possible, for there to be a handover period between PSAs to enable the new PSA to be introduced to parents involved with current casework.

Under the Data Protection Act 1998 parents can ask to have access to information that the PSA has recorded. It is important that PSAs record only factual information that is given to them and understand that records of their own interpretations, assessments or value judgements may be read by parents. Records need to be accurate and kept up to date for ongoing casework. PSAs should be aware of data protection issues and in particular should seek and follow advice from line managers about the school's data retention schedule.

The majority of PSAs in the pilot project fed back that it would be helpful to have a standardised simple consent form for sharing information that parents would sign. This could be held on file, would be in line with developing practice around information sharing (for example as with the Common Assessment Framework), and would avoid any misunderstandings of PSAs acting with permission. Parent Partnership now provides this consent form. There may still be a need to use additional consent forms for access to other services or procedures.

Training and support about confidentiality, record keeping, and how to anonymise data when necessary are be included in initial PSA training, through in-service training, and in the support offered by PSA Locality Coordinators (PSACOs).

Read through any documentation from the Educational Psychologist with the parent and ensure there are no barriers to understanding arising from any difficulties with literacy the parent may experience.

Encourage the parent to contact their child's school or other setting and to ask the SENCO or senior member of staff to explain any Educational Psychologist's documentation or meetings that have been held with the Educational Psychologist in the school, and their understanding of any implications for work with the child.

Encourage the parent to contact the Educational Psychologist directly and ask for a meeting to clarify understanding of what he / she is communicating.

If the parent does not feel confident to make direct contact, to offer to contact the Mannamead Centre or other location on their behalf and, with the parent's permission, to ask the Educational Psychologist to contact the parent.

If the parent requests it, to consider a member of Parent Partnership staff, or a PSA, or a Parent Partner (IPS) to support the parent at the meeting with an Educational Psychologist.

If the Educational Psychologist is not able to talk with the parent by telephone, or to arrange a meeting within a reasonable time period of say three weeks, then for Parent Partnership to offer the parent a brief meeting with the Senior Educational Psychologist who manages Parent Partnership to explain what the reports / documentation from the Educational Psychologist means. Before meeting the parent the Senior Educational Psychologist would talk briefly with the Educational Psychologist involved.

The Senior Educational Psychologist for Parent Partnership would feed back to the Educational Psychologist their understanding of any barriers to understanding raised by the parent, for example in written formats or aspects of discussions that parents had not understood or felt comfortable with, to help build our awareness of helpful practice in communications with parents.

Where a difference or difficulty is not resolved the Senior Educational Psychologist for Parent Partnership would advise the Principal Educational Psychologist in order to identify a structured way forward.