Changes to our Parent Groups and Befriending Service

Amaze’s recent restructure, driven by reduced funding and increasing costs, means some changes to our Parent groups and befriending service across Brighton & Hove and East Sussex.

Some of our parent carer groups will run less regularly, and some will be run by trained volunteers instead of staff.   

See the tables below for changes to our regular groups (and those that are staying the same) in each area.  

Brighton & Hove

East Sussex

Unfortunately, we will no longer be able to offer wellbeing sessions on a regular basis. If free wellbeing opportunities or partnerships arise, we will of course make them available! 

We currently manage 20 different WhatsApp groups for parent carers. Some are area-specific, some for a particular SEND condition or a particular group of parents. Our volunteer befrienders will continue to moderate all these groups. We now also have a single ‘announcements’ WhatsApp group where we share event information. This helps us ensure we don’t interrupt important conversations in the regular WhatsApp groups. All WhatsApp group members are automatically added to the ‘announcements’ group. 

We will continue to review all these groups to ensure we have the capacity to run them successfully. If not, and no volunteers are able to support, we may have to change their frequency again in future.  

Visit our Events page for details of all upcoming groups 

Befriending 

We continue to have a waiting list for befriending in Brighton & Hove and East Sussex. When this waiting list becomes too long, we close it for a period of time. 

We aim to recruit and train new befrienders twice a year to help address this demand. Our befrienders are all parent carers themselves. They get one to one support as well as annual appraisals and refresher training. Find out how to Be a volunteer befriender – Amaze Sussex 

If you have any questions or concerns about these changes, please email [email protected].