Voice of our children, parents and families

We're here to support, encourage and care for children, young people and their families. 

It's important to listen to you and understand what your lives and experiences of our services are like. This is so we can be sure we're making a difference as well as improve the way we do things. We know our services would be better if we designed them with you, not for you. We shouldn't assume what you need; we must listen and work in partnership with you to come up with the best services with the money we have. 

We already do this in some areas, for example:

• children and young people with SEND and their parents are helping us improve the EHC plan process
• children and young people have produced materials to help others who are coming into care
• young people and parents have sat on interview panels to help us recruit
• our Dorset Young Researchers help test services and ask other young people what life is like for them

The new Dorset Council gives us an opportunity to do this on a larger scale. 

We'd like you to help us create a set of principles that will make sure we involve children, young people and parents more often. We will apply these principles to service improvement work and this will help make sure we move in the right direction. 

You'll also be invited to contribute to our services in the future. How and when you get involved is really up to you. You could attend workshops or sit on panels. If you don't have a lot of time you could join an online discussion or help test a new service. We want to have a variety of parents, carers and young people with different interests and experiences who we can call on from time to time.