Local Offer Live
On Wednesday, 26 March 2025, the Leeds Local Offer Live event took place at Pudsey Civic Centre. This was an in-person marketplace event to provide families with the opportunity to find out more about all the different services available in Leeds that support SEND children and young people and their families.
Don’t worry if you couldn’t make it on the day. It’s a requirement for each local authority to publicise their ‘Local Offer’, which is information about services for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and their parents and carers, all in one place. This is provided all year round on the Leeds Local Offer website: https://www.leedslocaloffer.org.uk/ Following the 2025 Leeds Local Offer Live event a ‘virtual’ version of the event for families who were unable to attend. Please see further information here.
I have visited the Leeds Local Offer website several times over the last few years, but I have never attended one of the Live events before. It was great to see the range of services available for SEND families all in one hall. Delegates could drop in anytime between 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. Parents, carers, and professionals could browse information and chat with representatives from the various organisations and groups.
I was attending, both as an individual parent carer and as one of several volunteer Leeds Parent Carer Forum (PCF) Representatives and Steering Group members who were present throughout the day. We were pleased to talk to parent carers attending and signed up many new members. Signing up as a member extends our reach. It enables us to represent your views more effectively, as well as keep you informed of developments in SEND in Leeds, including opportunities for workshops, training, and consultation events, via periodic emails. Great if you’re not on Facebook, or in any case to ensure you don’t miss any important information. You can register anytime via the PCF website – https://www.leedsparentcarerforum.co.uk/register-with-us/
Eating and ARFID workshop
Two workshops were held in addition to the marketplace stands. The second of these was led by the Leeds PCF, following ongoing discussions as part of our Health workstream on ‘Eating and ARFID’ (Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder).
The workshop, led by Louise Sanderson, a member of the PCF Steering Group, was well attended, with standing room only available for later entrants, as the topic was highly popular among both parent carers and professionals. Louise explained her personal experience with ARFID, as well as the work of the PCF in general and, in particular, for the Health workstream. Kate Burns, Service Manager of CYPMHS (Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services), also known more commonly by its old acronym of CAMHS, explained the history of the current Eating Disorder service. She explained that they were commissioned to develop an eating disorder service around 6-7 years ago for only 3 specific eating disorders – anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder. This means that there is currently no pathway for support for ARFID within Leeds, which is also reflective of the national picture.
Louise and Kate explained that the purpose of the session was to gather feedback from parent carers on the existing services they had accessed and to begin considering what an ARFID service, should one be commissioned in the future, would look like. Kate explained that because ARFID is complex and multidimensional, and there are no current publicly available NICE guidelines to draw on, establishing any service would not be straightforward. That was why they were calling for parents and carers ‘experts by experience’ to share their knowledge and insights.
Following the presentations by Louise and Kate, engaging and insightful debates took place at each table on the advice or tips that parents and carers would share with other families. At my table, we were fortunate to have a good balance: parents relatively new to the concept of ARFID, some experienced parents who had been navigating ARFID for several years, and a couple of professionals who sometimes had to support families of children with ARFID symptoms as part of their roles. Some good tips were shared, with a dominant theme of the value of connecting with other parent carers either online or in-person to share ideas and information.
Some insights were shared with the entire room, including the difficulties families faced in obtaining timely and appropriate support for their children and young people. The consequences of this on the individual child or young person, their family, and the financial cost of expensive treatment that had to be provided by the NHS once the crisis had been triggered highlighted the need for better proactive management and maintenance support, as well as a clear pathway for families experiencing ARFID to access such support.
The parent carers in attendance were asked to complete a survey, the results of which will be shared with our colleagues in Health as part of the ongoing Health workstream. The PCF will also develop a digital survey on this topic to gather further data on the experiences of families in Leeds.
The Leeds PCF aims to collaborate with Health colleagues in the future to provide parental feedback on ARFID, hoping to influence decision-making on a potential pathway across Leeds. Watch this space!
Joanne Feaster
Leeds Parent Carer Forum Representative
March 2025
