Forward Together is a 3-year project taking place across Kent and Medway, The Black Country and Manchester and Salford, building on previous learning from regional work in the Getting It Right project. The focus is on families and individuals with severe learning disabilities whose behaviour challenges.
As part of the project there is a CBF Family Carer Project Worker based in each of the 3 areas, who supports the delivery of the work in their locality, bringing in valuable lived experience and local knowledge.
Project Aims:
The Forward Together Project aims to:
- Build local partnerships to support increased engagement of families and service providers at a local level to share best practice and generate sustainable networks for future work.
- Support national partnerships to escalate key issues and increase coordination of a national picture with which to effect change in policy and practice.
- Increase engagement of families across our 4 key communities to ensure they have access to targeted information and support and are connected to local and national networks.
Communities of Families:
The Forward Together Project aims to develop connections across the regional networks, as well as strengthening our existing national networks and communications to improve access to information and support and opportunities to gather direct input from families lived experiences to improve local services and support focused on these four communities of families:
- Early Intervention – Young families
- Transition – Young Adults moving between child and adult services.
- Families in crisis or at risk of crisis
- Sustainable Care – Adults and Older families
Concentrating our communications and understanding our impact in relation to these four areas will help us to support families to plan for changes and transitions at all stages of life, preparing for the challenges ahead and taking preventative action to reduce poor outcomes and crisis that can occur when support and services fail to meet people’s needs.
Regional Networks and Community of Practice Events:
The Forward Together project has developed a multi-stakeholder regional network for each area, and this will involve facilitating two action focused meetings per year, sharing information, delivering existing CBF workshops, and feeding into the national work through ourChallenging Behaviour National Strategy Group (CB-NSG).
Connecting the Forward Together project with our existing network through the CB-NSG aims to ensure local issues are highlighted at a national level and that regional networks can feed into national strategies and influence actions.
The first Community of Practice events were held in June 2025 in the 3 areas. Please see summaries of the discussions on the attached below:
Kent and Medway – 23rd June 2025
The Black Country – 10th June 2025
Manchester and Salford – 13th June 2025
We will be collating the information from the local areas and developing communications to highlight the local area issues and the national issues focused on our four communities of families. Keep an eye out on our social media and webpage for updates.
To find out more about the Forward Together project, or if you have any questions, please email us at: Forwardtogether@thecbf.org.uk
Sign up to become part of your local regional network here: