ACES Options: Parents and schools knowing about each other's needs.

 
ACES Options give all parents a positive opportunity to tell schools if they have Access, Communication, Equality or Support needs.

Access: getting to, into and around the school site, buildings and classrooms.
Communication: formats of letters and notices e.g. large print or electronic, or by person to person conversations.
Equality: support from school if needed for disabled parents and their children to have equal opportunities in all school activities, including thjeir access to out of school activities for their children.
Support: a point of easy contact with universal and specialist community resources.

Children learn better when their parents are involved with their school lives, but disabled parents can find barriers to encouraging their children. Barriers include:

• School buildings that are inaccessible, making it hard to visit and talk to teachers.

• Letters that are inaccessible to those with vision impairments, dyslexia or poor literacy.

• Transport that is inaccessible for disabled parents to take children to school when beyond the parent's walking distance.

• Interviews with school staff can be very stressful and emotionally inaccessible for some disabled parents.

• Disabled parents may need support at home to prevent having to depend on children.

The Equality Act 2010 places a duty on schools to promote disability equality but parents often don't want to talk to schools about their own needs in supporting their children's education,  and schools may not understand the consequences of the barriers facing parents.

Finding out about parental needs is called ‘disclosure'. This word has negative implications because we ‘disclose' crimes on insurance claims and job applications. It doesn't encourage disabled parents to tell schools if they have particular needs.

NDPA proposes ACES Options as the name for a positive conversation between schools and parents that all parents can recognise and have confidence in using.

ACES Options introduce ideas to both parents and schools of:

• A professional recognition of a parent's expert knowledge of their own situation.

• The first and best way to a mutual win in helping children learn.

• Can be offered to all parents on enrolment and in yearly updates to create an understanding and expectation of all parents being equal in their partnership with school, and to avoid stigma.

• A signal to parents that school intends to support them to help their children learn and to help them find more support if their family situation becomes hard to manage, increasing parents resources for keeping control of their own family situation.

The challenge for schools, local authorities and Government is to create whole school systems to support consistent delivery to parents of their ACES Options, especially in larger secondary schools.

Norfolk has a Joint Protocol between Community Care (Adult) and Children's Services to provide support disabled or ill parents in their parenting role, including needs around their children's education.

More information for parents about getting support here.