Today, sendPACT finally decided to write to Eveleen Riordan, Assistant Director, Schools and Learning, and also Chair of the SEND Coproduction group.
Here is a copy of our letter.
“Since we last met with you, Ann Graham, DCS, and the Leader on 13 May, we wanted to take this opportunity to feedback to you on the SEND coproduction journey. The feedback forms on the way meetings are conducted with parents have been quite positive and we are very pleased to see this change. However, we do have some serious concerns.
To summarise, the group has met four times, once a month, since May. But, we feel that throughout all the meetings, we fail to see any real outcomes – there have been a lot of useful discussions but nothing still finalised. To illustrate this, we have attached some of the meeting minutes. We’re aware that this process takes time, and we’ve been very patient and hopeful with each meeting, but would you think that four months of meetings without clear outcomes is reasonable?
sendPACT is committed to collaborating with Haringey, and we’ve been striving to do this for the last four years. We have pointed out that the main reason parents/carers do not engage with Haringey is because they don’t trust that the council listens or acts on their views. It seems that after your positive email about coproduction going forward on 7 May, we are back where we started from.
Coproduction is more than just meetings with parents/carers (see again the Ladder of Engagement that we shared with the group; we are again at ‘tokenism’) – coproduction involves actions to promote change.
It doesn’t help to ease our concerns that we have not yet received the official Haringey statement that we requested for back on 13 May, both are linked and equally important. We were advised we would see a draft by 29 May and you have been assuring us that it would be with us.
As we expressed to you on Friday 12 July, we are very unhappy and disappointed about this, especially since we are aware that a draft has already been circulated.
We hope you appreciate the gravity of our concerns and can help all of us towards a meaningful progress.
Kind regards,
sendPACT”
sendPACT 
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