Involving young people with disabilities seminar

Tags: disability | events | MENCAP

After visiting a myplace project last year that had engaged intensely with young disabled people throughout its consultation process, I discovered a new interest and a desire to learn more about involving young people with disabilities in youth consultation and beyond.

So it seemed the perfect opportunity to develop a further understanding when I saw the ‘Involving young people with disabilities' seminar advertised on the myplace newsletter. I popped on the website straight away and registered my attendance.

So the 28^th of January came around and I jumped on a train to London and made my way to the Lancaster Hall Hotel where the conference was being held. As I walked in to the suite that the seminar was being held in, I could see the Mencap banners and a wealth of literature spread around the room. I could instantly feel that I was going to learn a lot at this conference. I sat myself down with somebody that I'd done some consultation work with previously and eagerly waited for the start.

The conference began with introductions from our hosts for the day, Phil Smithson from Mencap and Kate Martin from the Council for Disabled Children, who set the themes of the seminar. The main theme was the inclusion and participation of young people with disabilities and ensuring that their needs are being met.

The first topic was "duties and drivers for involving disabled young people." We were told how the term "disabled" has changed over time and what a myplace project's duties are when involving young disabled people. As the conference was myplace focused, a lot of information was given about accessing further funding which links in with other projects such as "aiming higher for disabled young people" and "short breaks."

As participation was the theme of the day, we were shown a presentation on the different barriers of participation for disabled young people. This opened my eyes to more possible barriers, apart from the obvious barriers such as accessibility. I discovered a myriad of possible issues such as: a lack of resources, a lack of staff knowledge, the wrong attitudes and poorly developed service structures. This put into perspective some of the problems that young disabled people are faced with when becoming involved in the development of projects such as myplace.

For me, the best part of the seminar came next. We were treated to a series of presentations from myplace projects that are renowned for their world class involvement of young disabled people. Having met some of the staff from the Westfield Folk House project from Mansfield before, I was really pleased to see them there.

First up were Andy Vine and James Doyle, representing the Children's Society from Solihull. James is the disabled young people's champion for the Children's Society and I found it very inspiring to hear his views as they were accurately representing young disabled people. They ran us through their "making it happen" programme which can link in with myplace projects.

Next up was Chesterfields Fairplay project led by project manager Heather Fawbert. It was great to see they had brought some disabled young people Ryan and Laurel with them to talk about their involvement within the project. We were shown a lot of slides of visits and consultations that had been conducted with the group of disabled young people that the project already worked with. It was really good to hear the young people themselves telling us how they were going to end up with the facilities that they had asked for!

Next up was the project I mentioned earlier, The Westfield Folk House project from Mansfield. Presenting were Danielle Metcalf, a youth worker involved in the project and Rachael Clement, club support worker from their disabilities support team. Having already met these two before, I was quite excited about their presentation. When I visited before, the energy and enthusiasm of the staff and the young people was fantastic. Something that really stood out from their presentation was that they had made changes to their original architect designs after consultation with young disabled people. They had changed the location of their access lift so that the entire building will be accessible to wheelchair users. Other projects seemed particularly interested in their vibrating dance floor, which was requested by deaf and hearing impaired young people. The project team also worked very closely with young disabled people to develop the plans for a sensory garden within their centre's grounds.

After this we were told lots of further information that helped projects develop their involvement of young disabled people and make the necessary adaptations to ensure that their needs are being met.

All in all, it was a brilliant and eye opening seminar. I wanted to learn and came out with a greater depth of knowledge than I could've hoped for. The whole day showed everybody there that you don't have to be an expert on disability. The young people are the experts... listen to them!

Joe Harkness
myplace Young Consultant

Click on thumbnail to open gallery

Click here to find out when our next Seminar will be.