The Learning Disabilities: Challenges and Choices in Carer and Accommodation conference takes place on Thursday 3rd April from 10 am to 4.30 pm at teh Woburn House Conference Centre in WC1. 

The session will look at care and accommodation for adults with severe learning disabilities, in terms of the legal, regulatory and academic frameworks, the experience of families and the perspective of care providers. 

Tickets for parent carers and other family members are £39 each including a hot buffet lunch and other refreshments. 

Whilst this is more expensive than most of the events we tell you about, the event does include some exceptional speakers including Professor Luke Clements and other well known speakers in this field. 

For details see the flyer here. 

If your child has an EHCP and is now in year 9 or above, it is important to start thinking about what will happen when they get to the age of 16 and become legally responsible for making their own decisions, and perhaps start to think about their future in terms of getting a job or living more independently. We know that this can be a worrying time for parents and carers, and it is important to start thinking about the transition as early as possible so that you will be well-informed and ready to support your young person through the changes.

The Local Authority's Preparing for Adulthood booklet is a key document to help you understand the process and support. You can see this booklet on the Local Offer here and there is an easy-read booklet here and additional information about the process here

We recommend that you should attend as many of the Preparing for Adulthood online events as you can. It is worth starting as soon as possible and you may wish to repeat some of the sessions over the next few years.

Preparing for Adulthood events

Full details of the Preparing for Adulthood sessions are available here.

The next sessions will be:

Day services

Date: Thursday 27 March 2025
Time: 10:30 am to 12:30 pm

This event will help you understand the following:

• What are Day Services and how you access and pay for them.
• Where do you find out about the different providers and their programme of activities?
• How will attending a Day Service benefit my young person?

The session will be at the Integrated Learning Disability Service
Carnegie Building
258a Hertford Road
Enfield
EN3 5BN

Getting a job

Date: Friday 2 May 2025
Time: 10:30am to 1pm

Find out about:

• SEND Careers
• Supported Internships
• College courses
• Equals Employment Service

The session will be at the Integrated Learning Disability Service
Carnegie Building
258a Hertford Road
Enfield
EN3 5BN

These events are part of a series about different aspects of the Preparing for Adulthood process. If you have been unable to attend a session, the presentations will be added to the Local Offer Preparing for Adulthood page here shortly after each session. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see links to each presentation. 

Sessions are held online or at the Integrated Learning Disability Service, Carnegie Building, 258a Hertford Road, Enfield, EN3 5BN. 

Drop in sessions

On the first Friday of every month, parents and carers of young people aged 16 and over can join the monthly drop-in sessions 10 am - 12 pm at the Integrated Learning Disability Service in Hertford Road, where you can talk to a member of the ILDS team, and Jane Richards from Families in Transition to Adulthood. More information on the flyer here. The next session will be Friday 4th April. If you would like to attend please book an appointment by noon on the previous day. If this day does not work for you, please contact Jane to discuss an alternative timing.

You are welcome to bring your young person along with you. 

The Local Authority has just released its booklet for SEND and inclusive holiday playschemes for Easter 25. 

This will be added to Enfield's Local Offer for SEND shortly, but in the meantime, you can view it here. 

HOLIDAY ACTIVITIES AND FOOD PROGRAMME (HAF) – EASTER 2025

The DfE funded HAF programme is running in Enfield between 7th – 17th April 2025

Children from reception to year 11, in receipt of benefits related free school meals can receive up to 4 days of FREE fun and food across Enfield. Each day will include a nutritious hot meal, snacks and a selection of activities ranging from basketball and dodgeball to first aid and cooking. The overall programme is not SEND -specific, but there is some SEND provision within it. 

You can see information about the programme in the poster and the brochure. 

The full programme is at https://traded.enfield.gov.uk/news/2025/mar/holiday-activities-and-food-programme-haf-enfield-easter-2025

For more information please email HAF@enfield.gov.uk

Our Neurodiversity Parent Information and Networking event took place on 5th March 2025. 

You can see all the presentations from the event here and the slides from the Neurodiversity Team Pathway here.

Additional information:  

• Information about Ordinarily Available Provision including a version of the information for parents and carers can be found here. 
• EASA website - https://www.enfieldasa.org.uk/
• ENAS website - http://www.enfieldnas.org.uk/
• Autism Central website - https://www.autismcentral.org.uk/hubs/london-delivered-contact-and-ambitious-about-autism

If you attended the event and would like to give your feedback, please complete the feedback survey here.

The 'worry form' for the Neurodiversity Team Pathway can be found here - you can use this to give your feedback on anything you think the team has missed. 

This event was run as part of the Partnership for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS) project but was open to all parent carers of neurodiverse children and young people (not just those in the participating schools). 

For more information about the PINS project see the newsletter here. 

Our Voice are currently running a series of Positive Behaviour sessions: 

• Introduction to Positive Behaviour Support workshop on 12th February. We are planning a further session - date to be confirmed.
• If you have attended our Introduction to Positive Behaviour Support workshop, please complete the feedback survey here. 
• You can see the presentation from this session here. 
• You might also like to have a look at this video - on Supporting Children's Behaviour at Home. 
• Positive Behaviour support drop-in sessions where you can discuss individual questions relating to your child/young person's behaviour. The last session will take place on Friday 7th March 25.  See our events page and the flyer for more details. 

Please note - it will normally be possible for Cheviots to provide creche facilities and/or a translator for any of these sessions. Please give as much notice as possible if you need either of these.  

Enfield Council have asked Families First to help them review Early Years Inclusion Services in Enfield. You can have your say by joining one of the two Zoom sessions on Monday 3rd March at 10 - 11.30 am or 7 - 8.30 pm.

More details (and links to join the sessions) on the flyer here. 

You can also give your view through the survey at: Enfield Parents/Carers Feedback Form 

For the Morning Zoom session join here 

For the evening Evening Zoom session here 

Our guide to What's On -Play and Leisure in and around Enfield has lots of information on local SEND-specific and inclusive activities in and around the area (including some days out in Central London and further afield). The guide was last updated on 5th January 2025. 

This guide focuses on ongoing term-time activities (although some continue during school holidays), and will be regularly updated with the latest activities and dates, so do check back regularly. We will also let you know about relevant one-off events via our weekly updates to members - please join our mailing list to receive these, if you haven't already done so. 

Some new and/or one-off activities coming up include: 

• Inclusive table tennis - information here. 
• Inclusive cricket - information here. 

In addition, we usually publish a short 'What's on?' guide during each school holiday, featuring information about specific activities during the next holiday period.  

Please note that these activities are provided by external providers, not Our Voice, and inclusion in this guide should not be taken as our endorsement of any particular provider. 

If you know about any relevant local, accessible activities that aren't included in our guide, please do let us know - email us at info@ourvoiceenfield.org.uk 

Please give us your views!

As you may know, Our Voice is part of the National Network of Parent Carer forums (NNPCF) London Region, and we feed in parents views regionally and nationally to ensure that the voices of Enfield families are heard in all these national conversations. 

In the last few weeks there has been a huge focus on SEND on a national level including a number of reports, research papers and consultations that NNPCF have been responding to on behalf of parent carers.  You can find out more about all the different reports and consultations, and why we have chosen the questions in the survey,  in the presentation here and there is further information on the NNPCF, News page.

In order to respond to live consultations on behalf of the London Region and obtain parent carer views on some themes that we see emerging nationally we’ve created a ‘catch all’ survey, and would really appreciate it if you could take some time to tell us about your views and experiences so we can make sure that these are included. 

You can access the survey here https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LondonPCF2025

We’re asking for responses by the 5^th February 2025 so that we can submit a regional response to the Solving the SEND Crisis Inquiry Call for Evidence and create a supplementary regional report for the Law Commission Review of Disabled Children’s Social Care.  We have included questions that correlate to the Local Area SEND Inspection process.   This will help us to support individual Forums when preparing for an inspection and provide some helpful context to the inspection judgements across the region.

The First Route Scheme supports access to public transport for young adults and adults with learning disabilities. It is aimed at those who travel independently, could travel independently or those who use, or could use, public transport with support. 

The scheme was set up by Enfield Council in partnership with the Metropolitan Police, Transport for London and Arriva buses, to help support individuals who were not confident with using public transport, including young adults before they transition to adult services and adults with a learning disability.

Their sessions take place on the first Thursday of each month and give an opportunity for individuals to gain confidence to travel independently and safely, including looking at the kinds of scenarios that they could encounter on public transport. There are morning sessions from 10.30 am to 12 noon and afternoon sessions from 1 pm to 2.30 pm. 

The current dates are Thursday 6th February, 6th March, 3rd April and 1st May. 

More details are on: 

Poster for First Route Independent Travel training 

Bus Day factsheet

More details about the development and aims of the scheme here

The meeting point is Edmonton Green Bus Station – Sessions start at 10:30am or 1pm and last for 1 and a half hours

To book or for further information please contact Claire Fenwick, Team Leader, Community Link Edmonton Tel: 020 8132 1476 email: Claire.Fenwick@enfield.gov.uk

Calibre Audio is a national charity which provides free audiobooks to children and young people under 25 years with SEND. The service makes books and stories accessible to children who find reading print difficult. 

Audiobooks can be accessed via digital streaming or a USB postal service. 

For information please see the two flyers: 

Free audiobooks for children 

Free audiobooks for under-25s