[senco-forum] Step parents - hopefully just one more time

Re   relationships between staff and parents:

I try hard to foster a working relationship / partnership rather than that 'them & us' mentality by:

establishing contact with new parents very early on: chatting on the phone about their child's interests, what makes them tick
inviting parents in, if they wish, for an informal discussion
sharing the proposed IEP, asking for their views ~ being prepared to 'tweak' if necessary / possible
swapping email addresses so they know how they can contact me and I can contact them w/o wasting hours trying to get them by phone

Jenny Cluley
SENCo (secondary)
(I think tea and cakes at meetings are an excellent idea ~ anything that gets those endorphins flowing works for me!)

----- Original Message ----
From: June Marriott <june_marriott at yahoo.co.uk>
To: senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk
Sent: Sunday, 21 October, 2007 5:21:30 PM
Subject: [senco-forum] Step parents - hopefully just one more time - and bullying

May I respectfully remind members to take the time to go back and read original correspondence if they want to give an opinion on my mailings. May I also (respectfully, but only just) remind members that random, unfocused, abuse sent privately is extremely provocative and will be forwarded to the general forum  (apologies to the rest of you if this is boring, but it's a personal policy) as well as to everyone else I know for their personal entertainment. As you may have gathered, I welcome lively debate and have been very impressed by the passion inspired by recent topics, even if opinions were the exact opposite of my own. It's good to see so many posting their thoughts and very interesting to hear about personal experiences. I do not, however, welcome idiots and will not tolerate abuse nor twisting of my words.

  As for step parents.... I have a step parent, as did my father and many other members of our family over the generations - I've found several back in the 1600's - therefore, I can safely say that I - DO - NOT - OBJECT - TO - THE - TERM. Does that make sense? Do I need to put it in another language? Is there something missing from the sentence? 

  But anyway, back to SEN matters... We've heard a great deal about the horrors that have been going on, from SENCos and parents. My own story runs to chapters and volumes and even I'm bored by it :-) 
  I would be very interested in everyone's thoughts on what should be happening? How could matters be improved? If you had complete control over your job and department, how would you run it? My question relates particularly to relations between staff and parents. Obviously, more tea breaks (to post on here ;-)) and better (or even any) cakes for meetings would be at the top of my list, but how about the more serious things? How, for example, should "difficult" parents be handled? Or perhaps you think things are just fine as they are?

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