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Youth Parliament

Young Voices Youth Parliament is for young people with additional needs, aged 13 – 19 from Suffolk. It follows the same model as our other Youth Parliaments, but in Suffolk VoiceAbility has gone into partnership with Out & About. This has been commissioned by Suffolk County Council.

The Young Voices Youth Parliament currently has over 20 Youth MPs from seven schools in Suffolk – Beaconhill, Thomas Wolsey, The Bridge and Suffolk One in Ipswich, Priory and Riverwalk in Bury St Edmunds and Hillside in Sudbury. They also have MPs from three colleges - West Suffolk, Otley and Suffolk New College.

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Autumn Update 2011

It’s been a busy time for the Young Voices Youth Parliament.  Since the Parliament started in Suffolk in Dec 2009, we have consulted young people who have additional needs in Suffolk on the following topics:

• Leisure
• Education
• Transitions
• Health
• Keeping Safe
• Youth Services

From these topics the group has identified ‘significant changes’ that they feel needed to be made, to improve services and the lives of young people living in Suffolk.

A steering group made up of service users and ex services users from both VoiceAbility and Out & About, the two organisations that facilitate the Young Voices Youth Parliament, has also been set up.  The Hearing Voices Steering Group, will help steer these organisations and services in Suffolk, to involve young people in decision making and delivery of these services.  The group will work closely with the Youth Parliament, to enable the voice of young people in Suffolk to be heard and listened too.

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Current Projects

Suffolk Stay Safe Card

The original idea was taken from the Cambridge Stay Safe Card, and Youth MP’s in Suffolk said that it would be a good for Suffolk to have their own one. The card will contain emergency contact information in case the holder gets lost, worried or needs help. This will be supported by having identified Safe Zones, where the holder can go for help.  These ‘Zones’ have been indentified through consultation with various groups of vulnerable people. Other organisations in Suffolk worked in partnership with the Youth Parliament to achieve this.  These included Suffolk Constabulary, Suffolk Hate Crime Service, Adult Safeguarding and Suffolk County Council.  Suffolk Hate Crime Service and Suffolk Acre will be organising, training and promoting the Stay Safe Card and Stay Safe Zones from now on, but the Youth MP’s and the Young Voices Youth Parliament continued involvement. The card will be piloted in Felixstowe during the Summer 2011.

UPDATE:

The Suffolk Hate Crime Service told the Youth Parliament at their Parliament day last Friday that there are currently around 15 Stay Safe Zones in Felixstowe. A list will be made available on various websites shortly.  The next towns will be Stowmarket and Sudbury.

Don’t Risk It

During consultation for the Health Parliament, it was identified that there wasn’t enough accessible information about sexual education and sexual health for young people.  Working with Suffolk Integrated Health, the Youth MP’s decided that there needed to be an easy-read page on the ‘No Risk’ sexual Health website www.norisks.co.uk.

The Youth MP’s came up with the slogan ‘Don’t Risk it’, to be used as the title for the new section.  The Youth MP’s and members of the Hearing Voices Steering Group worked with a local street artist to produce a banner that will be used as a link to the page, as well as a promotion tool.  Click here for the full story.

UPDATE

Julie Smith, manager SIH, spoke to the Youth Parliament on the 14th October at Parliament Day, explaining that ‘ there will be further website development to link to easy read information over the next few months. SIH are now engaged with three organisations/groups that are working with people with special needs or learning difficulties to develop a working group to discuss training needs and plan an approach.’  The other 2 groups that SIH is working with are: the Expert Patient Programme – Genesis / Orwell Mencap and the Info Bar – Bury St Edmunds

Partnership working with Suffolk Constabulary 

from a pledge made at the Keeping Safe Parliament. 

The Youth MP’s and Steering group members were invited by Chief Inspector Kerry Cutler to a day at the Police HQ in Martlesham Heath to work on some ideas for new accessible information.  The young people came up with 3 ideas around Cyberbullying, Respect and Drinking Responsibly.  Suffolk Constabulary will investigate these ideas further, with the plan to use them in future campaigns.

UPDATE

Suffolk Constabulary have sourced funding to help make the DVD/Film/Animation about Cyberbullying. The film will be made in conjunction with students from Lapwing www.lapwingsuffolk.org.uk, who provide individual learning programmes for young people who have complex barriers to learning, with the Youth MP’s as clients, actors etc.

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Work in Progress

Suffolk Health Passport

Currently Cambridge Youth Parliament is running a Health Passport Pilot with Addenbrookes Hospital, and we are awaiting to see the results from the scheme, so we can see the best way to proceed in Suffolk.

UPDATE

Person Centred Planning/Transitions – A DVD and leaflet has been produced and the Youth Parliament is looking into the best way to get this circulated to the relevant people. Funding is being sourced to enable the DVD and leaflet to be printed and circulated.

Suffolk Link

They are working on 2 issues, identified at the Young Voices Youth Parliament Day on Health. 

• Providing accessible information and body maps in GP surgeries and Hospitals. This has been taken to the boards of NHS Suffolk Patient Experience Network and NHS Gt Yarmouth and Waveney.  They have requested examples, and will be considering how to progress. 
• Age appropriate wards. It has been recognised that separate wards would not be feasible in Suffolk, but ways to improve young peoples experiences whilst in Hospitals are being looked into.

UPDATE

Body Maps: There is a cost to GP’s in implementing this. NHS Suffolk noted that the GPs are all required to sign up to being a “Learning Disability Enhanced Service”. NHS Suffolk proposed if the LINk is willing to endorse the use of body maps to enhance the experience of people with learning disabilities in GP surgeries, this may encourage GPs to commit to financing body maps in their surgeries.

Age Appropriate Areas in Hospital: Some initial discussions had happened with Ipswich Hospital, these were around improvements they were hoping to make concerning this issue. West Suffolk Hospital have explained how they approached age appropriateness in different situations. 

It was proposed and agreed that if Ipswich Hospital is considering this issue, good practice should be shared to see if services can be improved across the county.

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The Young Voices Youth Parliament is gaining recognition in Suffolk as a group that supports young people with additional needs, get their voice heard and for that voice to be heard and listened to by the people that can make changes, to their lives and the lives of other young people.