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A Better Start Southend
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Parent Led Review

Written by Emma Hawker, Parent Champion

Introduction

Genuine co-production goes beyond consultation—it requires a real shift in thinking and in power. For organisations, this means not just inviting community voices in but creating space for those voices to be both listened to and also to lead the process. As A Better Start Southend (ABSS) drew to a close, a parent-led review emerged as a powerful example of this in action.

 

Parent Champions—deeply embedded in their communities—recognised the need to reflect honestly on the programme’s impact in those communities. In collaboration with the Engagement Team, one parent led the design, delivery, and analysis of a survey that captured the authentic experiences of those involved. The feedback not only strengthened the network of Parent Champions but highlighted the true value of their role. It showed the power of peer-led engagement and how deeply the role resonated with those who had taken it on—leaving a legacy of community leadership, trust, and meaningful co-production.

Background

I am fortunate enough to have been involved in A Better Start Southend (ABSS) for several years, from late 2018 until the culmination of the project more than 6 years later. Over this time, I have seen or been involved in some capacity in the evolution of co-production between professionals and service users. This has included many successes as well as a few opportunities for development and future learning.

Transitioning towards the final phase of the project was always going to be a challenging situation for many of the professionals and families involved in ABSS as this was new territory for everyone. By late 2023, engagement, communication and planning all began to look a little different than we were used to, and some in the parent community were feeling unsettled by the uncertainty, needing reassurance and clarity about what their future in Southend would look like without ABSS in its current form.

Working with members of the engagement team, we identified that we needed in order to create an opportunity for Parent Champions to be able to express their concerns and also identify what answers and information would be needed to help alleviate some of their anxiety about the final phase of the project. This was an opportunity to take stock of parent views in a process facilitated by parents themselves, resulting in the parent led review.

Read the highlights of the review

Process and Involvement

Working with the Engagement Team, we reflected on possible options that would give parents the opportunity to share their honest insights into how they felt about various elements of the project.

 

We decided that we would offer a few different options, primarily in the form of a simple online survey, so parents could complete this at their leisure, and so we could capture both quantitative and qualitative data. I decided this should be anonymous so that parents could feel more comfortable in honestly sharing their viewpoint, even if that meant it might be more difficult to check engagement and completion across the parent community.

 

Parents were given the opportunity to utilise a device in the parent hub to complete the survey should they wish, or to complete a paper copy. They were also invited to share their feedback with myself, or a member of the Engagement Team using WhatsApp or in person. We felt this would provide enough options to allow for any accessibility, language or comfort issues parents may have with using an online survey to be addressed and make the survey more accessible and inclusive.

 

I designed the questions with some support from the Engagement Team, who then created the survey using the ABSS Survey Monkey account. It was shared by me and by members of the Engagement Team to help reach as many of the Parent Champion community as possible and was completed during November and December of 2023.

Outcomes

The link to view the results was shared with me, and I used this to create a simple analysis of the key themes along with some recommendations, presented in Canva. This was shared with the Engagement Team, the ABSS Leadership Team, and at the next Parent Group meeting in February 2024, where I had the opportunity to present the findings.

 

Most parents chose to complete the survey online, and responses showed a few clear themes. There was a good degree of engagement and anecdotally a few parents shared with me how pleased they were to have the opportunity to express their concerns confidentially, rather than feel like they were ‘complaining’ or ‘making things awkward’ at events such as governance meetings.

 

There were several recommendations that emerged both from my own analysis, and through the discussion around the survey results at the Parent Group meeting. This was developed into a Parent Led Review Action Plan by me, members of the Engagement team and the ABSS Project Team.

Learning and Recommendations

It was great to see that, because the parent community were able to share their insights, changes were implemented to improve communication and processes. I also believe that being asked to express their viewpoint of the project at a time of transition gave some parents reassurance about the continued value of their contributions and played a part in maintaining a purposeful culture around the Parent Champion role.

 

While a number of these implemented changes remained in place until the end of the project, on reflecting there are some certainly some things I would do differently if I were to repeat this. One obvious activity would be to repeat the survey again, after the action plan had had time to embed, to gauge the effectiveness of the changes. Even if this was done in a different way, completing some kind of monitoring to assess the impact of the review would have been beneficial and would have meant we could further refine improvements that weren’t having the intended effect.

 

On a personal note, I also think I could have been more explicit in drawing links between the survey feedback and the actions that later took place, i.e. making a very clear connection for parents in the style of “you said, we did”.

Read the highlights of the review

Conclusion

One of the most powerful outcomes of the parent-led review was not simply the recommendations it generated, but the shift in dynamics it represented. By creating the conditions for parents to lead, ABSS demonstrated a rare but crucial act: the willingness of an organisation to give up control, even temporarily, in service of true and genuine collaboration and co-production.

 

This act of stepping back allowed space for parents to step forward—not as token representatives, but as experts. It sent a clear message: their voices are not only valid but vital. The resulting review improved communications, strengthened trust, and helped maintain a sense of purpose within the Parent Champion community at a time of great change within ABSS.

 

While there are areas that could be refined—such as closing the feedback loop and assessing long-term impact—the project stands as a testament to the transformative power of shared leadership. When communities are trusted to lead, outcomes are more authentic, engagement is deeper, and the legacy of co-production becomes something far more meaningful than just a chosen method of engagement—it becomes a fundamental mindset.

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