Do you have a child who has Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD)? A new task group led by the NHS is being set up in Cumbria to redesign the support available to children with FASD and their families. We would like to invite you to join this Task group!

What do we mean by ‘Task Group’?

SENDAC attend lots of task groups in Cumbria. These are groups of professionals from the Cumbria SEND partnership (Local Authority professionals, NHS professionals and SENDAC)  that meet regularly to design or redesign SEND services in specific areas/ specific diagnosis’ and needs. For example, we are currently on the autism diagnosis pathway task group, the sensory processing task group, the short breaks parent advisory task groups and lots more! The idea is that the partnership work together to improve services in Cumbria, taking into account each other’s professional and/or personal opinions in the specific area. i.e. The NHS giving a health perspective, Local authority giving an education perspective and SENDAC being their to give a Cumbria wide parent perspective. All of us working together, is called ‘coproduction’ where we coproduce services to ensure they meet children/ young people and their family’s needs.

What is the aim of the FASD task group?

This FASD Task and Finish Group has been set up to establish a graduated, needs led, multidisciplinary approach to assess, support and diagnose children and young people with FASD and provide them with an appropriate management plan.

How can you help?

SENDAC have decided to ask our wider membership if they would like to take part in this task group alongside one of our parent carer representatives. SENDAC do not currently have a parent carer who has a child with FASD and although we are fully committed to attending this task group anyway, we thought it would be appropriate to give the opportunity to a member who has first-hand experience of the support available in Cumbria.

If you would be available to help with any or all of the following commitments below, please get in touch:

• Help the forum create a survey to collect feedback from parents and carers in Cumbria on the current support available to them and their child with FASD– This will be online via Microsoft teams, (should take approx. 2-3 hours of your time over a period of days (Whichever times/days are best for yourself)
• Help collect parent carer views and share the survey.
• Attend 1, 1 hour online talk-to-us session alongside a SENDAC parent rep via Microsoft teams with other parent carers in Cumbria who have a child with FASD to collect parent carer feedback (Whichever times/days are best for yourself)
• Attend the actual task group to partake in the discussions and bring wider parent carer opinions and experiences to the meetings on what support they would like to be available, and ideas regarding raising awareness of and the graduated response to FASD

Details of task group meetings: 

• Starting September 14^th  2023
• Bi-monthly (once every 2 months)
• Online Via Microsoft teams

To find out more about the task group and the aims, please see attached the terms of reference below.

If you would like to get involved in this task group or would like more information please email Hello@sendac.org