JOIN US AND TRAIN AS AN SNC CHAMPION AND BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE –
EMPOWER YOUR LOCAL COMMUNITY!
A Special Needs Community Champion could be a parent/carer with a child/young person/adult with special educational needs or disability (SEND), who wants to support other members of their community in any borough of London and Greater London. A Community Champion can also be a volunteer with experience or interest in learning about supporting families.
They work together on a voluntary basis (initially), to reach out to the SEND community across London, and now spreading into neighbouring counties outside London.
Information and SEND Local Offer experts
Community Champions will have access to various aspects of training on SEND related topics and be knowledgeable about the support and provision available to families so that they can direct the parents/carers/families to helpful sources of information and advice. Families with children with SEND are unique, because they are the only group in society who have to navigate the major departments of their local area (education, social care and health) simultaneously as they engage with the various agencies to support their child. SNC Champions will be trained to be experts in their own SEND Local Offer and proficient in navigating their borough’s Local Offer website, which can be very confusing to many in their community, including professionals.
Community Links
They will act as representatives of SNC and be our link to various local community groups around London and liaise with professionals, organisations, and agencies in the wider SEND Network. They will collate information about what is important to the London SEND community and help us find community-based solutions to ensure that we are working towards a wider inclusive and disability-friendly London.
Benefits
We will provide our champions with many benefits of being trained to represent and support their community. These include:
- Skills & Training (experts in their SEND Local Offer)
- Confidence
- Meet new people and develop a network of friends and professional contacts (part of local and national network)
- Training certificate
- Expenses (for specific activities)
- Income (for specific roles, e.g. in funded SNC projects)
- Career development opportunities
- Work experience & references
NEW PROJECT: Train to provide Financial Health Checks for your local SEND community
As parents and carer we know it can sometimes be challenging and overwhelming to understand the SEND world. The experience team behind SNC has been working with national agencies, the Harrow local parent community, local authority and health parents for over 13 years. We know from practical experience, that every family’s circumstances is complex and unique to them and a one size fits approach does not work for our community. That’s why we provide an personal initial individual telephone support to find out rom the parent carer all the details and what they want and need for the whole family to cope and thrive. We know there is a lot of help out for families if they knew where to look. We created a simply checklist to help families be aware of some of the essential support available to them and we would like help from an army of volunteer community champions to help us spread the word and ensure no family falls through the gap and looses out of the different forms of direct and indirect financial support available, We know that for many families, this can make all the difference to them continuing to care for their children and adults with special needs and for them to stay healthy and well themselves.
We also know that the caring role most often restricts carers’ opportunities to get, stay in employment, or progress career opportunities that will lift the family out of poverty. Therefore, the project will create future employment opportunities for parent carers themselves to train as special needs community champions to provide financial health checks and support to other families with children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. We will help empower families across London to discover all the possible financial support available to them to lessen the impact of the disability and improve the quality of life of the family as a whole.
Get in touch
Get into contact and lets us know if you are interested and would like to represent your local community where you live, contact us: CLICK HERE
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