About Us

Northamptonshire’s Parent Partnership Service provides parents, carers and professionals with impartial advice, support, and information around special educational needs (SEN), exclusion, choosing a school and parent involvement in decision making.

If you are worried that your child may be having difficulties at school, or have any questions around your child’s education, we can support you in a number of ways.

All Parent Partnership Service staff offer impartial, confidential advice and support.
We will work together in partnership with parents to ensure they are able to get their views heard by the schools, and Local Authority.

What can you expect from our service?

We are the Northamptonshire Parent Partnership Service and, although we are employed by the county council, we are there to provide impartial information and support for parents and carers who have a child or young person with special educational needs.

If you would prefer to have somebody completely independent, we can provide an independent parental supporter for you.

We offer to help you:
 express your views about your child’s educationwith paperworkprepare for meetingsarrange for someone to attend meetings with you if you wish.Try to resolve disagreements about your child’s special educational needs.

We are available during office hours and have an answerphone for calls received outside office hours.

We aim to return your call within two working days.

We provide telephone advice and information.

We will do our best to put you in touch with support groups and voluntary organisations when appropriate.

You can make an appointment to visit us at our office or ask us to visit you.

When you first contact us, we will ask you for details such as your name, address and your child’s name and date of birth.
These details are kept on a secure database that is only seen by NPPS staff - unless you ask us not to.

We promise that:
 Any information you give is confidential and will not be passed on to other organisations including other sections of Northamptonshire County Council. The personal contact details we take and any notes made during our involvement with you will only be seen by your parental supporter or another member of NPPS staff.We will only contact other people on your behalf when you have given your consent.We will only get information about your child or family if you ask us to.We will return any documents when you ask us to.Wewill contact you if we have not heard from you for two months to check whether you need further help. Although we would like to keep in touch with you even when you no longer need our service, we do not have the capacity to do this.You can contact us again if you need further help at any time.

It would help us if you:
 Contact us when you need help.Keep us informed about matters relating to the situation you have asked us to help you with.Sign the Family Agreement Form or telephone the local Children and Young People’s base to give permission for us to have copies of paperwork sent to us.Tell your child’s school or other professionals if you would like us to attend a meeting with you.Let us know if you cannot keep an appointment we have arranged.Complete a short evaluation of our support when you let us know you no longer need our help.

We hope that you will find that we provide a high quality information and support service but if you have a complaint about our service please tell us about it.