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Parent Advisory Group

 

Would you like to help Tiny Lives develop the support we provide to families? It is important to us that the support we offer families is directly influenced by the families we support. To help us do this we are setting up a Parent Advisory Group (PAG).

We are looking for parents with lived experience of having a baby on the Neonatal Unit or who stayed on Transitional Care for a week or more at the RVI. We are keen to recruit parents who have a wide range of lived experience and backgrounds.

The PAG will provide insight from a parent’s perspective feeding into the work of Tiny Lives enabling us to deliver the best support we can to families who have had a baby on the neonatal unit or transitional care at the RVI. The PAG will also feed into unit developments and link with other parent experience groups such as the Newcastle Maternity Voices Partnership and Northern Neonatal Network. All parents’ experiences are important to us but to ensure feedback is related to the currant services and support we offer your baby should have been on the neonatal unit/transitional care from 6 months to 5 years post discharge.

The role of the PAG is to:

  • Help Tiny Lives to understand the impact of its work
  • Help Tiny Lives to develop existing projects/services and to create new ones by providing ideas, suggestions and feedback
  • Act as a link to other parents and find out their views about Tiny Lives planned or current activities
  • Be the parents voice at other groups/meetings about neonatal/transitional care such as ward Patient Experience groups and Newcastle MVP when asked

Who can join?

  • The PAG is open to any parent with lived experience of having a baby on the neonatal unit or been on transitional care for a week or over at the RVI, from 6 months to 5 years post discharge. This includes parents who spent some of their time on other neonatal units before discharge home, covering the North East and North Cumbria
  • We want to recruit parents who have a wide range of lived experience and backgrounds. This includes – race, culture, gender, sexuality, disability, couples, single parents, young parents, premature births, full term births and multiple births
  • The longest you can stay in the PAG is 3 years
  • The PAG will have between five and ten parents in it
  • The PAG will also be attended by one member of the Board of Trustees and one paid member of Tiny Lives staff – usually the Projects Development Officer

How much time do I need to commit?

  • The PAG will meet every other month, ideally one meeting will be before the quarterly Tiny Lives Board meeting
  • Meetings will usually be no longer than 2 hours at a time that is suitable for most members to attend
  • Meetings could be face to face in Newcastle, online over Teams or a mix of both
  • Members of the PAG could be asked to be involved in any ‘task & finish’ meetings for a specific topic or project. These may involve only some members of the PAG and other parents may also be recruited
  • You would be expected to attend at least 3 PAG meetings a year

How can I join?

  • You can apply here – we will be holding informal interviews on an ongoing basis.
  • Once the PAG is established we will run an open recruitment process so you can express an interest in being involved at any time; when vacancies arise, parents already applied will be contacted first.
  • Membership will be reviewed annually.
  • If we need parents with specific lived experience and background, we recruit for these representatives.

If you would like more information and a chat before you apply, please contact Jacqui Adams – Jacqui@tinylives.org.uk