Involving young people with disabilities

Catering for the needs of all young people requires you to think about all sorts of needs. This is not necessarily difficult if you think about it from the outset. Our essential guide and leading practice seminar will help you to see how the needs of young people with disabilities can be incorporated without significantly affecting your project timescales or budget. This article highlights some of the key issues that all myplace projects need to consider.

Involving everyone

myplace projects have achieved success by bringing young people together to make a positive difference to their communities, and to improve their own lives. Improving the lives of young people means ensuring that everyone gets the chance to participate - and that's why it's so important to ensure young people with disabilities are included in every part of the process.

The first step is to attract young people with disabilities to the project. Using the appropriate existing support services is the most fool-proof way of doing this, while avoiding any pitfalls that may present themselves later on.

Our Essential Guide to involving disabled young people in myplace identifies the need to involve all young people at every stage of developing a project and building facilities for them.

Going beyond the legal requirements

Building facilities which can be used by young people with disabilities doesn't just mean meeting the legal disability access requirements. The wide variety of impairments that young people may have means that these minimum standards are unlikely to be adequate for everyone.

However, the solution to this problem is simple: by involving young people in a tour of the building or ideally, if it hasn't been built yet, a similar facility - they can easily point out the things they ‘dislike' about the structure. By consulting young people they feel part of the process and are less likely to feel frustrated or excluded when practical problems arise later on. Simple practical issues such as signage can be easily remedied in early stages of development, and the cost of restructuring, redesigning and rebuilding can be completely avoided by asking young people what problems they can identify before mistakes are made.

Find out what disabled young people want

Involving young people with disabilities at each stage of a myplace project's development is essential: myplace guidance strategies are motivated by the ‘active participation of young people' which means that all young people, particularly those who are most disadvantaged, should have the opportunity to be involved in any project from its conception right through to maintaining it in the future.

‘Aiming High for Young People: A ten year strategy for positive activities', says all young people, including the most disadvantaged, are to be at the heart of local decision-making.

Active participation of disadvantaged young people ensures good practice when building facilities across the country. Attracting the most impaired young people to a youth project can be a daunting prospect, but can be achieved by simply providing the right support, and using the resources available.

Individual impairments may require specific support throughout the myplace process. This support may take different forms at each stage - but putting in the work and setting out guidelines at the earliest possible time will allow the project to progress more smoothly in the long run, and will avoid upset and confusion at later stages.

Project leaders promoting inclusion can find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place: trying to actively help young people with impairments become part of the group whilst ensuring the attention doesn't lead to isolation. This is why effective communication between those running a project and disabled young people is so important.

Breaking down the complex issues in attracting young people with disabilities to a project requires expert advice - and the best people to give it are the young people themselves.

! Involve us from the start
! Listen to us
! Make it fun
! Involve all of us
! Prove you are listening
! Be open and honest
! Respect us
! Give us time
! Support us to make our own decisions
! Make sure we get something from it

What is most significant from this list is that these tips could apply to any young person, whether they have a disability or not.

Identifying and removing the barriers

The Essential Guide states that the current accepted model is the social model of disability, defined "as the disadvantage experienced by an individual as a result of barriers (attitudinal, physical, etc.) that impact on people with impairments and/or ill health."

Therefore, to engage this group of young people, the barriers which would prevent them from participating as readily as their peers must be removed - and it is the job of the project leaders to remove them.

This can be achieved by first recognising the restrictions imposed on these young people: whether they are to do with environment, attitude, or the physical requirements of the project.

Again, identifying these barriers at the outset will save a lot of trouble later on.

By reassuring families that impaired young people are able to join in with their peers at any given stage of the process you can help meet the recently introduced National Indicator 54 on disabled young people and their families' satisfaction with services. This will also help to achieve NI 14 on young people's access to positive activities.

The report Going Places, asked disabled young people to identify what would make it easier for them to access play and youth facilities. Their answers included:

• Listening to us - "you can find out what's best for us by involving us"
• Better attitudes towards disabled young people from staff and other young people
• Play and Youth activities that are welcoming and easier to access
• Accessible and affordable transport
• Improving independence and safety

As before, these suggestions are not complicated, and they could apply to any young person. Notably each problem at the root of these recommendations could be avoided by staff taking positive steps early on.

By avoiding frustration and embarrassment further down the line, relationships between youth leaders and young people can be maintained through talking to each other openly and honestly. If disabled young people feel they can open up to staff about potential or existing problems without feeling defensive or inhibited then problems will be identified more quickly and resolved more easily.

Getting further help

If you would like to look at how these issues may affect your project, find out how other myplace projects have addressed barriers and get expert advice for FREE then we would recommend you sign up for our seminar being held on Thursday 28th January 2010 in London.

You can also access resources from a number of major organisations' websites who have experience working with disabled young people, including: The National Council for Voluntary Youth Services - the third sector national umbrella organisation for youth services which offers training to local youth groups; NAVCA (National Association for Voluntary and Community Action), the national voice of local third sector infrastructure in England; Barnardos, which has a number of projects targeted at involving disabled young people in their community; The Children's Society: a leading children's charity offering training packages; and Mencap, which offers information on local groups working with children and young people with learning disabilities, and runs a national helpline on 0808 808 1111 or by email: help@mencap.org.uk.

Disabled young people just want to be involved in projects from the beginning, to be shown the same respect as their peers in the group and to be consulted rather than dictated to about what they need.

Attracting and including young people with impairments in developing projects and building facilities isn't hard, it just means looking for support in the right places.

Taking guidance on involving this particular group of young people in youth projects will ensure best practice is followed, problems are avoided, and the most disadvantaged young people in the community are not ignored.

Further help is available in our Essential Guide to Involving Disabled Young People, click here to download.