Youth Parliament

Parliament days The Youth Parliament was set up to highlight the barriers that hard to reach groups face, such as young people with disabilities, additional needs and youth offenders.

The Cambridgeshire Youth Parliament work with young people aged 14 to 25. The young people are voted in by their constituents (young people from their school/ college or Youth Clubs) and once voted for the young person becomes a Youth MP.

The Youth MPs meet with professionals (such as councillors, service managers, Westminster MPs) on a three monthly basis on Parliament day to discuss a particular subject that the Youth MPs feel is important to young people. Before the Youth MPs decide what they want to talk about they speak to their constituencies through surgeries and questionnaires to find out what young people’s issues are and what they want to change as a result of these issues. The Youth MPs then work with the professionals to make these changes happen for young people.

Speaking Up Examples of some of the subjects that we have talked about on Youth Parliament Days are Moving On, Leisure and Feeling Safe. From this the Youth MP’s have managed to make lots of things happen for Young People; this includes a Stay Safe Card so young people feel safe to access the community; buddying schemes so young people can go out without their parent or carer and a Cambridgeshire train company has promised free travel for people who are supporting young people to be independent during train travel. These are just some of the changes that the Youth Parliament has made.

Stay Safe Cards

The Stay Safe card has been developed in partnership between Cambridgeshire County Councils Children’s and Young Peoples Disability Team (as a result of the Aiming High initiative), Cambridgeshire Constabulary, SOVA and The Cambridgeshire Adult and Youth Parliaments, after young people had identified that they didn’t feel safe whilst accessing the community independently.

The card can be used if someone feels that they need help when they are out in the community and are lost, scared or in need of advise. The person would then show the card to a member of the general public or anywhere that there is a stay safe sign up, such as information points, shops or a police station. The details on the card will enable support to be given easily and allow the person to gain help when needed and therefore feel safer. The card also covers any extra information that the person wants to put on the card concerning their health or communication needs.

You can download a card to print out at home here.

and click here to download instructions on what information to write on the card.

If you would like to have a stay safe card or know of someone who might benefit from having one you can download one here.

‘’When I was elected I felt brilliant! I was really looking forward to making positive changes where I live’’

- Daniel Harding, Cambridgeshire Youth MP

Update on Stay Safe Cards

We have had fantastic success with the getting Stay Safe Zones in Cambridgeshire. These are places that have been trained in using the card, where you can get help if you need it.

Look out for the Stay Safe stickers in these windows:

Promote the Vote

An innovative website was created as part of the Promote the Vote project which ran from Jan 08-Dec 09. A team of young people with learning disabilities led workshops telling people with learning disabilities about voting and encouraging them to register to vote. It won a prestigious ‘Doing Access Differently’ award, one of RADAR’s People of the Year Human Rights awards 2009.

The website uses ground-breaking techniques, particularly around the use of video to produce a website that is truly accessible to those with very limited literary skills. Take a look on www.promotethevote.co.uk