Enquire annual conference 2010: "Families as Learning Partners"
Tuesday 9th March 2010, Hamilton

Breakout sessions:

1. Creating Confident Communities
   Format: Presentation and Practical Workshop
   Led by: Jill Mennie, Project Co-ordinator - PEEP, Aberdeen City Council
   PEEP (Peers Early Education Partnership) is an early intervention programme (0-5 years old) that works in partnership with parents and carers to support their children's learning and development.
   This workshop will give information and examples of how PEEP engages with families, building relationships and confidence, and how the programme can be delivered flexibly to meet a range of needs.

2. Supporting Parents With Disabilities
   Format: Presentation and Discussion
   Led by: Andrew Miller, Scottish Consortium for Learning Disabilities and Kirsten Stalker and Richard Brunner from the University of Strathclyde
   This session will report findings from two projects. Scottish Consortium for Learning disabilities will present the Scottish Good Practice Guidelines for Supporting Parents With Learning Disabilities and the University of Strathclyde will report on their recent study, exploring disabled parents' involvement in their children's education. The workshop will draw out the lesson for good practice based on the parents' experiences.
3. Scotland's Travelling communities - parental involvement for mobile families?
   Format: Presentation and Discussion
   Led by: Dr Pauline Padfield, Director of the Scottish Traveller Education Programme (STEP) and Gillian Cameron, Seconded teacher of Travelling children (Fife)
   Scotland's Travelling communities are diverse. In this session the facilitators will guide you through the diverse communities using interactive activities, and then facilitate a discussion on the educational issues faced by Travelling families.  By focusing on the similarities and differences between the various Travelling communities relative to non-travelling families this session will help you to engage with Travelling families in appropriate ways.
4. Parental and Carer Involvement for Looked After Children
   Format: Presentation and Discussion
   Led by: Graham McCann (Scottish Government - Looked After Children Team) & Dr Graham Connelly (University of Strathclyde - Department of Educational and Professional Studies)
   Children can be looked after in a wide variety of settings; from those who are looked after at home and to those who are looked after away from home in residential, fostering and kinship care settings.  No matter the setting, the issue of parental / carer involvement in a looked after child's education can be problematic. This session will look at how to ensure that a child's right to education and support is not compromised by the child being looked after.
5. Kinship Carers - who has the parental rights?
   Format: Discussion
   Led by: Jackie Gattey - Dumfries and Galloway council
   This session will look at the area of kinship care, children who are cared for by members of their family other than their parents. This is a complicated area. Some kinship carers will be legal guardians for the children but others the arrangement is less formal, and this can bring problems when deciding on who has the right to be involved in the education.
6. Transitions from school, involving families
   Format: Discussion
   Led by: Enquire with help from some good practice examples
   The transition from school is a big event in any young persons life, and can be particularly challenging for a young person with additional support needs. At aged 16, parents no longer have an automatic right to be involved in a young person's decisions, but the young person might still want them to be actively involved. This session looks at good practice in this area.
7. Perfect Planning?
   Format: Practical workshop
   Led by: Robert Weetman, Transforming Transitions
   Some young people and their families tell us that the planning processes and meetings that they are invited to are occasions on which they feel bullied, ignored, and disrespected. Join us to spend some time thinking about what planning would (or does) look like when done really well. As part of this workshop I will introduce the Transforming Transitions project - which seeks to support young people and their families and allies to plan ahead in one of the best ways we can think of.