Positive stories may 2014

Youth Voice: Positive Stories May 2014

Young people at the Child Friendly Leeds Awards

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Youth Voice: Positive Stories A report by youth representatives and the workers that support them May 2014 Welcome to the May 2014 edition of Positive Stories. Our format reflects part of our commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child Article 13 - Freedom of expression ‘Every child must be free to say what they think and to seek and receive all kinds of information, as long as it is within the law,’ UNICEF UK).

The British Youth Council will share this report regionally and nationally, with local councillors and MPs, and certain media outlets, in order to raise the profile of the fantastic local work that we know is happening every day.

The case studies and stories of the work of young people in their local communities are reproduced here in their own words. If you would like to find out more about one of the projects you read about in this report, please email: mail@byc.org.uk This month we have also highlighted the recent results of Youth on Board (YOB) Awards which are an exclusively youth-led rolling award scheme that recognises innovative and exciting youth participation, both from young people and the projects and organisations that support them. See the end of the report for the results and for more information go to: byc.org.uk/training-services/awards/youth-on-board-awards The online survey remains open and we produce reports once a month, providing young people the opportunity to shout about the great work they have been doing in their local areas during the previous month. Previous reports are available online: www.byc.org.uk/uk-work/youthvoice The British Youth Council would like to thank all the workers and young people who took the time to promote and complete May’s survey and we look forward to hearing more from everyone over the coming months.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Contents Young People’s Stories East Midlands East of England London North East North West South East South West West Midlands Yorkshire and Humber Northern Ireland Scotland

4 7 13 21 22 27 37 50 56 62 67

Support Worker’s Stories East of England North East Yorkshire and Humber Youth on Board Awards

69 70 71 75

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Young People’s Stories

East Midlands Leicestershire Daria Eckert, Member of Youth Parliament I am Daria Eckert, the MYP for Leicestershire. I adopted Lord Lipsey and recently emailed him a page long email about the importance of votes at 16; why 16 and 17 year old young people don’t a say in their future, how 16 and 17 year olds are ready for the vote etc. I got a reply from Lord Lipsey and he said he still had to give the matter a great thought and research. He also said posed a few augments against votes at 16 but said it was good of me for pursuing it. He must not support votes at 16 now but I will keep debating with him on votes at 16 in hope to change that view!

I am also in the processes of getting in contact with Leicestershire County Council leaders and talking to them regarding votes at 16, and creating an event to raise the campaign awareness.

Rina Roy, 17, Member of Youth Parliament Recently I went to my local youth council meeting gathering views for Votes at 16 to include in my e-mail to my adopted Lord. I explained to them UK Youth Parliaments’ role and the Adopt A Lord Campaign in detail before introducing Votes at 16 as a topic and gathering their views. The young there told me that voting at the age of 16 is really important because we need to have our say as we are affected with things Government does and we are a part of the community.

They also commented on how at the age 16 we have lots of responsibility and opportunities that are associated with adulthood such as being able to play the lottery, get married, move out, get taxed, join army... So why can't we voice and we are mature and we know what's right to wrong?

I noted these things down and contacted my Lord and now await a reply. In the meantime, I received a citizenship award from my college for all the hard work I have put in. I look forward to hearing from my Lord and promoting votes at 16.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Lincolnshire Matt Mortimer, 17, Youth Councillor My name is Matt Mortimer (17) and I currently study at Peterborough Regional College doing a Level 3 in Production Arts. I am working on several shows in the upcoming weeks; a few include Dear Nobody, Animal Farm, Bat Boy and the Dance Show – plus extra voluntary shows (Bad Girls the Musical, Legally Blonde, Little Shop of Horrors & Hairspray).

All these many shows have a few things in common like….Commitment, Quick Learning, Reliability, Team Work, Good Communication, Hard work and finally Passion. All of those skills are required in my job roles as I do many jobs varying in what is set for me to do, for example Animal Farm and Bat Boy I am the Sound Designer/Operator….have you ever put an axe through a watermelon before to make a sound effect? Well I have!!!

My job roles are key to working well in a team and if it’s not run properly or our communication isn’t on good with one another then a lot of problems could arise which isn’t good for the Director, Stage Management, Actors or anyone for that matter. The next big thing I would like to bring up is PASSION, If you want to do something you love make sure it’s more than just a hobby, make sure you are 100% committed to it and show passion in everything you do, I show a lot of passion in what I do at College and that’s what everyone looks for, who will go that extra mile to make things happen??

My top tips for being successful, not just in the UK Youth Parliament or just in the work place but in life would definitely be the following: 1. Be passionate about everything you do and want to do in the future.

2. Communicate with everyone and as many people as possible…It’s not always what you know but who you know.

3. Be confident in whom you are and show people that, don’t hide it!

4. Be reliable to people who need you, whether it be for a show or just being on time in general!! 5. I cannot stress enough how important it is to work well in a team…Getting along with people is absolutely vital in everyday life.

Remember those tips and I guess I will see you be even more successful and committed than me one day? – Thank you for reading this.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories Georgina Hands, 16, Member of Youth Parliament Lincolnshire Youth Cabinet decides 'votes at 16 and affordable transport' key priorities at Skegness conference The Youth Cabinet welcomed Jack Oldbury, Skegness Youth Mayor, to our first meeting over the May Bank Holiday weekend in Skegness. We all discussed the importance of better communication with schools and youth groups. We also deliberated a range of issues before voting for UK Youth Parliament's national campaign 'votes at 16' and the local campaign 'affordable transport' as priorities.

We will be writing to seek views and support of key decision makers and support CallConnect's 'Get Around For A Pound' for under 18s off-peak single ticket journeys. We believe affordable transport is essential in encouraging young people to remain in education, employment and training. The Cabinet is looking to have closer connection with Children and Young People's Scrutiny to contribute to some of Scrutiny's debates on education and services for young people.

Rutland Heather Newton, 15, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament After meeting with Sir Clive Loader me and another representative from Rutland were given the oppurtunity to join the youth police and crime commissioner group. We attended are first meeting a few weeks ago in Lecicster which was great, we were able to listen and voice are opinion on different topics regarding the relationship between the police and young people.

Jadene and I really enjoyed the day because it was a new experience and it's another oppurtunity to help our local area.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

East of England Bedford Youth Representatives APRIL UPDATE VIBE VICE VERSA Kyle, Grace, Natalie, Haleema, Aklima, Rosa, Alice, Rahima, Lizzie, Radiya, Claudia, Joe, Laura .Aged 12 – 20. Group includes disabilities, young people in care, young carers as well as being open to all young people!

We are LINK Vice Versa and we are a group of 16 young people from all over Bedford Borough from 12 – 20 who do things together to make a difference. We have done inspections of services, grants for activities, equipment, disabilities, interviewed for new staff including the Director, given advice to companies and organisations on how to work with young people.

We decided we wanted to celebrate what young people do in Bedford Borough, the young people who do projects like us, the young people who were performing at the event, give something to do and somewhere to go for under 17s (up to 25s with disabilities) and do something organised by young people for young people. We also wanted to do something nice for children and young people in care so decided all the money from ticket sales would be given to the Looked After Achievement Awards to help buy prizes.

The night was amazing, awesome, cool, wicked – WE LOVED IT!! People came, we had a really good band perform called Catching Butterflyz, everyone danced it was sooo good. And we got

Youth Voice: Positive Stories some money for the Awards night for children in care. We are thinking about what to do next year‌we have got more ideas!

SuperKids Young Carers Haleema, Amelia, Malachi, Sophie, Chelsea, Lorna, Shelly, Alex Aged 9 - 13 Super kids is for everyone young children kids and me. Being a carer can be hard at times but most time i think it is fun because it makes me feel responsible,important as well as different. I am not afraid or ashamed of being different, i think it is quite fun because not all children can look after family members, so i am very proud.

In SuperKids we have ten members including three members of staff who are very kind , friendly,as well as easy to talk to. They also make the sessions that we have very fun and enjoyable.

We got asked to go and tell councillors what it was like to be a young carer at their meeting called Overview and Scrutiny on April 14th. We talked to them about the things that young carers have to do such as giving parents medicines, making tea or coffee, and taking parents outside to have some freedome and fresh air.

We will also asked them questions to get their responses and also to get their ideas about caring.

We made presentation abotu the things we do like the photo of doing things in the kitchen at home.

It was really good to see them – you could tell they were interested and cared and wanted to know what we thoguht they could do to help. We are going to write to them and invite them to our SuperKids meeting to tell us what they have done to change things.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories CiCC Youth Club 16 young people came – they didn’t want to share their names. Aged 7 – 19 The Children in Care Council is for children and young people in care with Bedford Borough Council aged 8 – 21. It is about supporting us, listening to other people, improving services, helping people in care, giving us time to relax, helping us to put our videos across, having fun and changing things.

We have a youth club and in April decided what projects we wanted to do. Our ideas were to do more activities, to do a community project, to do training and workshops for teachers, to do a swop day where teachers are in care and we are the teachers for the day, to make a buddy project, to go to Parliament for the day and to have trips.

At the April youth club we had a chef who we did cooking with (mmmm cakes) and we had a football coach and used the music studio. We also did ideas for the awards in September, ideas for a video to find new carers and then our ideas. youth Voice to Trip to London Natalie, Haleema, Amelia, Grace, Rhys, Shak, Michael, Joe, Lorna, Holly, Inderpahl, Romiel, Marco, Aklima, Christopher, Claudia, Laura, Rosa (group includes children in care, young carers, disabilities and all young people) aged 10 – 20)

Alistair Burt MP with Rhys from Youth Cabinet (previously DMYP in 2012) On April 7th we all went to London for our #youthvoice trip for the different youth voice projects. The Youth Cabinet planned it for everyone and there were 18 of us all together.

We started at the Florence Nightingale museum where we found out what she did to inspire people to do things

Youth Voice: Positive Stories differently. Some people didn’t know what she did she was so brave and it was new for some people.

After lunch at a café (where one person lost a tooth in a Panini!!!) we walked to the Houses of Parliament where we had a tour. We got to watch the Lords talking about youth work then the MPs talking about youth services. It was amazing to be in there.

Then we had a workshop on different types of decisions like devolved and European government and us in Bedford. Then the MP came to talk to us and answered questions from us on things like children in care, young carers, transport, education and was really good.

We were all REALLY tired at the end of the day on the train but had a great day – THANK YOU!!!

This is what we all said about the trip Amazing! Fun! I loved it because I got to ask an MP a question! As I am now inspired by them I want to inspire others to. I want to make a change for young people. I need to work harder to achieve my goals. I have a clearer idea of how the government works and am more motivated after talking to an MP. Everyone should visit the Houses of Parliament!

Epping Forest Jaymey McIvor, 16, Youth Councillor Elections were held recently for the next cohort of Youth Councillors for Epping Forest. This is the Fourth to be elected since the Youth Council was formed in 2007. Far from running out of steam, the outgoing Councillors embraced the publicity campaign for that election wholeheartedly.

They accompanied staff to school assemblies to spread the word and to enthuse others. They are continuing to be very positive role models for their fellow students.

The elections have gone from strength to strength. So much so that this year, elections were held in six of the eight secondary schools in the district and received a record 55 expressions of interest, resulting in 52 candidates contesting the elections.

The remaining candidates were rejected solely because they were either too young or lived out of the area. I believe the way in which the Youth Councillors (including me!) promoted the opportunities that being a Youth Councillor provides and the positive and enthusiastic way in which we have all represented our areas is a credit to all of us. I was fortunate enough to be reelected for my second term and I very much look forward to continuing to highlight the issues that are important to young people and making sure young voices are heard.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

27 Youth Projects on the map! I am very proud to be one of the members of the Epping Forest Youth Council who produced the ‘Tube Map’ showing the provision of activities for young people throughout the Epping Forest District. This is a project, which was carried out by both the Youth Councils of 2010/12 and 2012/14.

In order to produce the map a celebration evening was held at the Civic Offices in Epping. An invitation was issued, through established contacts and publicity in the local media for anyone who provides a service for young people run for young people aged 13-17 to come along and receive a certificate of recognition.

Each group represented at the evening was also awarded a grant of £100. The funding for this was obtained by the Youth Council from the Leader of Epping Forest District Council. The evening was a fantastic success and we received much positive feedback from attendees and Epping Forest District Councillors, including the Leader and Chairman. Following the event the ‘Tube Map’ was produced, featuring all of these groups.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

If you would like further information on any of the groups featured, please contact Di Butler Young Persons’ Officer on 01992 564365 or email dbutler@eppingforestdc.gov.uk

Suffolk Toby Jeffery, 16, Member of Youth Parliament In April, I organized a meeting with County, Borough and District Councillors to discuss the manifesto that I was elected on. The meeting was covered by the local newspaper. I have also been in contact with other adult decision makers to discuss future work and campaigns that will benefit many young people in the area, including a project to stop young people from starting to smoke.

Furthermore, plans for a Bury St Edmunds Youth Forum have started after I contacted several people that were interested in the project, and we are meeting to discuss these plans during the summer holidays. The forum should be starting in September.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

London Barnet Emily Otvos, 15, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament I've been campaigning for increased youth mental health support primarily in Barnet. I have met with founders of mental health organisations in my borough and have been in contact with founders such as O2 think big to take my project further. My aim is to create a free app purely focusing on teenage mental health, with a short film, links to advice and support and also what to do if you are the friend of the person who is suffering.

After meeting with two people from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), I have become a National Youth Representative. I will be going to the Houses of Parliament in June to talk to the National Health Select Committee.

Ealing Ashvarya Madhani, 15, Youth Representative As a member of the communications group for Student Voice, I have been posting relevant student-based posts on Facebook so as to engage a wider audience of young people.

Furthermore, as one of my principal manifesto points as an MYP for Ealing, I have delivered an educational lesson based on the issue of 'Community Cohesion' along with some of my friends. My aim was to increase awareness of community cohesion within young people, about what it is, the importance of it and upcoming local events in Ealing, in which they can get involved in.

This lesson was very successful because prior to the lesson, a very limited amount of students in that class knew what community cohesion is, but at the end of the lesson, the group has a wider understanding of what is meant by

Youth Voice: Positive Stories 'Community Cohesion'. Thus, this was my initial change action for promoting community cohesion in the local borough.

Another of my manifesto points was to 'Promote votes at 16 and 17 for young people'. Following this, I have joined up to the BYC campaign for 'Votes at 16' and gave an interview based on the 'Kenny Report' regarding votes at 16. The interview was broadcast in Parliament, where a meeting was held for the Lords.

Hackney Member of Youth Parliament In Hackney Youth Parliament we have just finished working with Adobe Youth Voices, we've made a film about Career's advice and guidance and work experience. We are going to show this film to Hackney Council, Schools, Youth Clubs, Prospects, Ways into Work and Inspire. The film is about what young people makes good advice and work experience and what adults feel it is about. It also allows young people to know what they should be entitled to. We filmed and edited everything ourselves and we are really proud of how it turned out.

As the Member of Youth Parliament for Hackney, I've been speaking to young people about what they want to be on the MYM ballots which I will use at the Annual Sitting.

Hammersmith and Fulham Fred Gill, 17, Youth Representative At the beginning of this month I was asked to host an event at the House of Commons to launch a project called better than the rest. This was a documentary about the dangers of legal highs.

There were MP's, councillors and various other decision makers in attendance. It was a great event and I wish all those that put time and effort into this film the best luck with the cause.

In Hammersmith and Fulham, the Borough Youth Forum are currently in the planning process about our shift to an elected group of young people, we have our new name and logo, all we need now are candidates for the elections in October.

Rahima Begum, 16, Member of Youth Parliament We have had a very successful meeting where we have now hopefully changed from Borough Youth Forum to Hammersmith & Fulham Youth Parliament. We have also designed a new logo, and have spoken about ways of advertising our self's and engaging more members.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories Member of Youth Parliament What I have been able to do as MYP is have the first ever successful school outreach project with my youth forum. I had a few weeks to plan out a session where I invited young people from my school to attended. Our topics where work experience and getting feed and from them about better ways employers can engage with young people and how we can promote our youth forum and increase engagement.

Just that school outreach projects are a very good way in getting information from the young people in your area and also gives you a chance to introduce yourself on a personal level.

Harrow Zak Wagman, 15, Member of Youth Parliament May has been a busy month for myself within the Harrow Youth Parliament (HYP). With exams taking a hold of a lot of our older members, including our Chair and Deputy Chair, the mantle fell to, the next most senior member, to lead the meetings. This meant that for three weeks, I had the task of chairing these meetings, leading the discussions, steering the debates and ensuring that everybody is working their hardest for the Harrow Youth Parliament. This seemed to be a challenge at first; however, after seeing some great chairs come over the last few years, I seemed to get into the hang of it. It has been quite a fun and enjoyable experience, but will be happy to see the chair return!

We’ve had some very exciting debates and discussions at HYP. This month, we, in the Commissioning Subgroup, led by myself, have been looking at and creating plans to monitor some of the council’s services for young people; we have been planning and preparing a presentation that a few senior members will be giving to the newly elected councillors soon, to explain what HYP and UKYP do and are; and lots, lots more too! Personally, I have also been beginning to formulate my plan as MYP, and my personal project that I will work on within Harrow. This will be about promotion and awareness of mental health, and I have been working on creating an action plan for that.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories Outside of HYP, I recently had a great experience, also related to debating and youth voice. Last week, on Thursday 22nd May, I went to the studio recording of BBC Question Time, in Radlett. It was a very exciting experience, and the panel included presenter David Dimbleby, Justice Secretary Chris Grayling and Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt. It was a great and fascinating experience to see it live, and the best part of all was that I made it onto the TV! I got chosen to comment on my opinion regarding Prince Charles’ recent criticisms of Vladimir Putin. This was great to talk in front of a whole audience, and on national television. So, overall, this month has been a very successful one, both for HYP and myself.

Deborah Perdoni, Youth Representative My name is Deborah Perdoni and I am a member of the Harrow Youth Parliament. Throughout the course of this month, I have been working within my subgroup to progress ideas for a new Children and Community Centre's programme, to be held during the Summer holidays. There have already been activity strategies similar to this created previously, however, we have been trying to look for alternate Children's Centres, and finalizing ideas for what types of activities to include in the programme.

There have been surveys designed to see what the youth would like to see in the activity centre.

We have recently implemented a new representation strategy, including new themes and topics to ask the youth we represent. I have been attending the weekly meetings on a regular basis, and contributing to new ideas for projects to support Harrow Youth Parliament.

Towards the end of the month, I and some of the Harrow Youth Parliament members will be making a presentation to the newly elected councillors, to show them what Harrow Youth Parliament is and does for the youth of Harrow. We have also been trying out different venues for our weekly meetings, to see which venue best suits our needs. I have thoroughly enjoyed this month at Harrow Youth Parliament, and I believe that it has been very successful and productive.

I have been involved in looking at possible improvements to representation strategies, and have been piloting them to view effectiveness.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Hillingdon Serife Gunal, 18, Member of Youth Parliament On the weekend of the 9th May 2014, I attended the European Youth Event alongside 16 other young people and the amazing BYC staff members, Aneta and David.

Having met with the group at a hotel near Gatwick airport, the day before we were due to depart, I was fairly apprehensive. We took part in a workshop that gave us the knowledge about the institution we were about to engage with and allowed us to set out some goals in terms of what we hoped to come home with.

So with my notebook in hand, we took an early morning flight to the beautiful city of Strasbourg and began, immediately, to take part in a workshop. To be involved in such activities, that were led by young people for young people, allowed us to access the information we were being given in an informal but no doubt, successful manner.

On this Friday evening workshop, my knowledge of the EU was challenged and consequently consolidated which, in hindsight, has not only benefited me, but others around me whom I am now encouraging to vote in the European elections.

The next day enabled me to really throw myself into the festivities with regards to meeting new people and getting involved. In line with my aim to ask as many people as I could why they think it is important to vote and whether they had any good ideas for a campaign, I spoke to, what feels like, hundreds of people from the other 27 member states!

Not only did I learn that all of the other EU teach their young people impeccable English but I managed to gauge an understanding of how both culture, and politics manifest themselves in the other countries. Further to this, I attended various workshops and visited every tent at the YO!Fest Village. 100s of selfies with the Parliament building, some new Austrian friends and the European Flag, later, I came away feeling knowledgeable, inspired and as if I had experienced some culture!

Our last day in Strasbourg most certainly topped it off though as I actually managed to order my breakfast in French (which made me feel less guilty about every other young person being bilingual) and we got to sit in the Hemicycle of the European Parliament. I thoroughly enjoyed the debates that took place and felt incredibly proud that the quality of debate and respect given by all concerned reflected what I believe young people are capable of but not necessarily perceived to be able to achieve.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories I left Strasbourg having had two incredible evenings enjoying music with everyone involved, an invite to watch the Eurovision in Austria next year and a plan. My plan is multifaceted but I have every intention of ensuring that I encourage as many people to vote in upcoming elections, to set up a campaign within my youth council that will facilitate and encourage knowledge of youth democracy and democracy in itself and also to further delve into the EU institutions.

On my return home, I was disgusted to see an article in the DailyMail which quoted the UKIP deputy leader as saying that the event was just a "propaganda event to make young people love the EU". This, alongside various other allegations and mistruths, completely undermined the special things that had taken place on that sunny weekend in the South of France. Unfortunately, my open letter, which was written as an anger�fuelled response to the article, was not published, but again, I feel I have learned something and so am grateful to have had the opportunity to experience it.

If you'd like to read my open letter, please find the link below: https://plus.google.com/106113093745897192875/posts/aZGWiLamo7i

Lambeth Jacqueline Gomes-Neves, 17, Member of Youth Parliament and Youth Mayor Following the Lambeth local council elections, last Friday, I have managed to negotiate with the leader of our council, Lib Peck, a mentoring relationship. This relationship will occur between members of the Cabinet and members of the Youth Cabinet, with the same portfolio area. For instance, our Your Cabinet member for Youth Services will be mentored by the Cabinet member responsible for Youth Services, which will be the cabinet member appointed to the portfolio of Young People and Communities. I will be mentored by the leader of the council.

This mentoring relationship will allow our Youth Cabinet Members to set mutual goals with Cabinet Members- a goal specifically tailored to their area of focus (their portfolios). This will allow us to utilise the expertise, resources and experience of our mentor, to achieve goals within our specific areas - giving us a platform to directly influence the decisions of our local decision makers. It will also give us a platform to hold the Cabinet Members directly accountable for promises and pledges that have not been attended to or fulfilled.

The leader of our council and I, have decided that this formal mentoring relationship will continue until the end of our two years terms, in 2016. Therefore, as a Youth Cabinet we will have the direct accessibility to influence our local decision makers and their decisions regarding young people.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Redbridge Joseph Perry, 15, Youth Councillor Redbridge Youth Council (RYC) is pleased to report that 2013-14 was by far our best year to date.

This is mainly due to the successful implementation of the Redbridge Young Cabinet.

The Young Cabinet is one of the first of its kind in the country and was set up to bring the RYC closer towards mirroring the adult council. The new project allowed the Youth Council to take on more responsibility, work and to achieve lots of recognition in the local press and with the adult Council.

The Young Cabinet was set up in June 2013. Elections were held within the RYC to find five young people to join the Members of Youth Parliament (MYPs) and Deputy Members of Youth Parliament (DMYPs) as members of the newly formed Young Cabinet. After three rounds of voting five Young Cabinet Members were elected. They mirrored the adult Cabinet taking up positions including Young Cabinet Member for Children's Services as well as Culture & Leisure.

The addition of the Young Cabinet has allowed the RYC to function much more efficiently with its members able to attend panels, lead discussions and complete work that was relevant to their portfolio, giving the MYPs a well-deserved break from such heavy workloads!

However, the best was yet to come. Having been so impressed with the work of the RYC and the Young Cabinet, Redbridge Council agreed to have a debate as part of Local Democracy Week involving senior members of all political groups of the adult Council answering questions posed to them by young people of Redbridge. The Leader and Deputy Leader of the adult Council agreed to set aside £100,000 to tackle the top three issues that young people voted on during the event.

The Young Cabinet worked tirelessly to develop the projects for the £100,000 Youth Council and Young Cabinet Priorities Fund. The 4 projects are Mental Health and Well being drama production; Safety Workshops; Careers Conferences, and a Webpage for young people.

This year's new Young Cabinet will have big shoes to fill and the mammoth task of implementing the ideas for spend, however they have support from core groups composed of RYC members and the RYC itself.

The Young Cabinet structure has brought so much to the RYC and young people in Redbridge.

We would encourage any Youth Council to do the same. Who knows, you may end up being given the opportunity to spend £100K on youth priorities as a result!

Youth Voice: Positive Stories Vera Okojie, 16, Member of Youth Parliament Hello, my name is Vera Okojie and I am a Member of Youth Parliament for the London Borough of Redbridge. Upon being elected, I would never have imagined receiving such a phenomenal opportunity to fulfil my lifelong dream-to make a difference. There has always been a strong desire within me to stand for what I believe in and always offer a constructive yet realistic view point in all situations therefore making a positive change for all who surround me.

Therefore, after much research, amazing support from my family, friends and teachers and attending the highly engaging Redbridge Youth Council meetings, I stepped to the post and after actively and dynamically campaigning to all youth in Redbridge and was elected in March 2014 (best moment of my life!).

This year the young people of Redbridge were highly fortunate to be given a staggering £100,000 budget by Redbridge Council to be spent on the Youth Councils’ main priorities such as up and coming projects, new ideas, conferences and more!

This has been the greatest amount of money ever received by the Redbridge Youth Council and I felt absolutely privileged to have been given the opportunity to play a main role in deciding how the money was spent. I have been even more overwhelmed by the prospect of receiving such a great platform to improve the lives of youth in Redbridge and the fantastic support shown from the council, I am sincerely grateful.

So far we have set up a Youth Cabinet which consists of the MYP’s, DYP’s and other members of the youth council, which are the group of young people who are in charge of the budget and decide how it is allocated and discuss what will be done and plan how to make it happen. There are several core groups involved and so far I have attended the core group for website we will be designing using the budget. The meeting was highly successful and I received the opportunity to talk about ideas and goals and negotiating if they could be achieved or not; I have high hopes for the website, so far so good!

There has also been a highly successful Inspirational Careers Conference tomorrow at Fullwell Cross, an equally as successful Schools' Councils Conference, a LSCB Event tonight at Loxford Youth Centre and more to come! With the help of my extraordinary team and equally as amazing, dedicated youth workers, I hope to effectively use the budget to funding more workshops and conferences, as part of my manifesto points, to promote crime and safety awareness and more.

There is SO much to do this year and I personally cannot wait; this year will be the best year for the youth of Redbridge as I will do everything I can to ensure that!

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

North East Newcastle upon Tyne Neil Kotre, 15, Member of Youth Parliament A few months ago, I became aware that Matthew Otubu, a tireless champion of the North East’s brilliant young people, was to step down as a Member of the Youth Parliament and a search for his successor commenced swiftly. The sort of person that was required to pick up the baton was someone equally undaunted by the rather large shoes that needed to be filled and the difficult but wonderful task ahead. In short, brave or stupid, preferably both. And it appeared that some chap called Neil Kotre fitted this criterion better than anybody else, due to an unprecedented, unanimous election victory.

So here I am, the new MYP for Newcastle-uponTyne. It’s taken quite a while for the cogs to budge, but I have attended an informative induction and am now working down the long list of thought-provoking ideas and priorities laid before me. Too long, some might say, to be achieved in just one year in office. This may be very true, but I’ll have a good crack at it anyway.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

North West Bolton Gulwali Passarlay, 19, Youth Representative It was a great opportunity to able to attend and participate in the EYE at Strasbourg European Parliament over the weekend of 9-11th of May. I was one the 17 delegates from the UK and real privilege to have met over 5000 young Europeans and share ideas for a better Europe. What was interesting for me were to be one of the only Afghans but one the few refugees to be part such an important event. Our delegation was impressive and enjoyed their company. We represented Britain to the best our ability. We all went to different session and event inside and outside parliament during the weekend. I took part in discussion, debating and talks about youth employment, immigration, Europe's future, and just general interesting stuff around.

Fortunately, I had the chance to ask questions and share my thoughts in every session and discussion I participated. Had a lot of fun meeting new people, enjoying the weather and leaning more about Europe and the views of its youth. There were energy, enthusiasm, hope, aspiration and sense of positivity

Youth Voice: Positive Stories amongst the delegates. I was one the 8 YO! Talk speaker and the only UK attendee to give a short and answer questions about my journey from Afghanistan, my thoughts on Europe, refugees and constrictive discussion around informing, inspiring, encouraging and empowering the youth.

The weekend overall was an excellent and productive experiences. When I was back from France - than in London I was invited to the Youth Employment Convention where I was on the panel on the Youth Debate and Call to Action with other young people representing different organisation.

The main reason I was part of the event were due my involvement in the Youthforia Youth Employment Commission and this is where we launch our report as well. No doubt the weekend and week was full of useful difference and has given me the confidence even more to represent the views of young people and make a difference. Since then I have being trying to encourage and motivated young people to vote and elected their local and European representative. I very much appreciate for having been able to go with BYC to this very important event. I hope we will have many more opportunities to ensure diversity of Young People.

Also with all my studies and other commitments through NSG but there are much more I do with different committees and groups to represents the views of young people and to make a difference to society as whole: 2020 Education Youth Ambassador, Member of National Scrutiny Group (BYC) [Representing North West in NSG], Member of the Children's Commission on Poverty – TCS, Youthforia Youth Employment Commission (YYEC), NWRWU, Youth member of UN Association UK, Children Champion – UNICEF, Young Labour Representative, Member of Equality & Diversity Committee/Peace Activist, NHS - Youth Forum Member (BYC), BASS, student rep - @UoM Ambassador for Care Leavers & SoSS, Young Ambassador for Refugees & Asylum Seekers, Bolton Youth International New Arrivals

Youth Voice: Positive Stories Representative, Vice President of United Afghan Peace Movement (UAPM), Political Analyst on Afghanistan & International politics.

Cheshire West Alias Buchanan, 15, Member of Youth Parliament Lately I have been focusing on writing to a lord. In addition to this I have written two letters, one supporting the Votes at 16 campaign, to attempt to get my lord on side and the other about the effects or academies upon young people. I have also been enquiring about the review your school activity of which I fully support. I feel looking into the PSHE in schools will be a must, if we are looking to put a curriculum for life into school timetables. I am disappointed with the fact that so many young people leave school without the basic life lessons that a good standard of PSHE can provide.

Knowsley Robyn Dooley, 17, Member of Youth Parliament On May the 7th I had the privilege of attending the Merseyside Special Schools Consortium Fund Raising event held in the Liverpool Town Hall, I was thrilled to be invited by a local school within my community. The day consisted of celebrating the money raised for Zoe's Place, a charity providing respite and end of life care to babies and infants aged from birth to five years suffering from life-limiting or life-threatening conditions, by all the young people within Special Schools across Merseyside.

The different events the schools held to raise money were endless, from discos to community walks. Altogether the young people raised over ÂŁ2,000. Towards the end, there was a Q&A session for the young people to ask locals Mayors and I questions about our roles and what we do within the community. I was asked how one can go about being elected as Member of Youth Parliament and what I enjoy about my role.

Lancashire Georgina Lloyd, 16, Member of Youth Parliament Since last month the Rossendale and Darwin MP candidate has been contacting me regarding the district youth council and the work that we're all involved in. I met up with him alongside two

Youth Voice: Positive Stories members of Rossendale district council and we discussed the roles we all hold, he also talked to us about how he supported the Votes @ 16 campaign!

We also discussed curriculum for life, jobs guarantee and much more. It was really good to hear how positive he was about UKYP work and how he feels we're doing well with the work we're involved in. I felt the meeting helped me develop meeting skills and also I got a lot of feedback on how best to efficiently campaign within the Rossendale area.

Manchester Michelle Saidi, 18, Member of Youth Parliament Manchester Youth Council has only been running for the last year and half and already there are requests for our presence at various meetings related to issues that affect young people in Manchester. All of these have been attended by various members of the Youth Council and there have been positive outcomes. Throughout the year, some of the visits have involved attending the People’s History Museum in order to learn the history of young people in Manchester in an interactive way and they have asked for our input on some of their events and Whitworth Art Gallery as they needed the opinions of the youth council on their new development.

In the last few months alone there has been various activities taking place in Manchester that truly shows how passion young people are about having a voice for one another. These include: Individual Electoral Registration (IER) Ambassadors.

Manchester is the first city in the country to be having Individual Electoral Registration (IER) Ambassadors within the youth council; which has led us to refer to ourselves as ‘lab rats’ of democracy. The aim of IER Ambassadors is to try and encourage young to be on the electoral register, of course for the purposes of being able to vote if you are registered but also for better credit rating, more funding in the city etc.

The IER Ambassadorial role will include going into schools and colleges and persuade young people to register and so far we have made a radio advert about the importance of registering and have gone into Manchester city centre on the Key103 media bus to hand out leaflet with information about registering; including having some young people registering on the day.

Further training will be offered to the IER Ambassadors to make sure we are fully prepped for the visits to schools. We are all looking forward to it!

Ward meeting with Councillors Just like many other youth councils in the country, there are different youth organisations that feed into Manchester Youth Council including five youth panels designated in north east south and central. The youth councils within these panels were given the opportunity to attend a ward

Youth Voice: Positive Stories meeting for the first time ever! The elected members among other leaders of organisations that represent the ward wanted input regarding why they have no youth participating in any of the youth panels designated across Manchester and how they can get young people in this ward involved. The meeting was a success to the extent that youth Councillors were invited to come back to the next ward meeting as they gave valuable advice into how they can get young people involved.

Active Lifestyles sessions now taking place!

In East Manchester there is now an Active Lifestyle session running every Tuesday due to the young people in that area campaigning for the lack of affordable sports activities. There was an acknowledgement of the resources present but the lack of availability was brought to the surface; as a result a new was scheme was put into place by Active Lifestyle to engage young people in sporting activities that are fun and affordable.

Meeting with RECLAIM RECLAIM is a multiple award winning leadership and mentoring project based in Manchester and they wanted to ask young people in the city about what make us feel ambitious, motivated and challenged. They threw workshops that allowed them to gain the views of the young people involved and managed to collect a lot of information about what sort of Youth Clubs should be open. They will be a follow-up session with RECLAIM as they still want further input from young people.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

South East Bracknell Forest Max Ranger, 16, Member of Youth Parliament Over the last year the Bracknell Forest Youth Council has been working together on regenerating the 'Xpresionz' website. Xpresions was created in the 90's as a one stop shop for all young people who needed advice or wanted to see what was going on in their local area. Many young people both inside and outside of the Youth Council felt that the Xpresionz website was both out if date and was no longer useful for young people like it was intended.

As a result of this the social media sub group, along with the Youth Council have worked together on regenerating the website to make it useful for young people again. This has included a tendering process, and two consultations, one of these talking to young people throughout Bracknell Forest regarding the content of the website and the other regarding the design of the website.

The Youth Council are now in the final stages of deciding a design for the Xpresions web page, a vote has been held locally and we are now hoping that the site will be live to go very shortly.

The project has given us the chance to be involved in a major project; it has allowed us to create what should be an amazing website for all young people in Bracknell Forest.

Hampshire Jack Welch, 21, Youth Representative As a part of a National Member organisation in the BYC network, I was fortunate to have a successful application to attend the European Youth Event (EYE), with another 18 young delegates and represent the UK between the 9-11 May. After some months of preparation, such as sorting my travel insurance and selecting my workshop activities from the extensive programme for the conference, I finally arrived at the hotel in the UK, where the group received a preliminary training session on the structures in the European Union and what to expect in Strasbourg when we arrived.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories The weekend itself was a great insight into some of the topics and debates into how the decision making processes work in the EU, including a session which looked into the broad political groups which represented the make-up of the Parliament.

As well as this, I attended workshops on other projects for young people outside of the UK and found some interesting organisations who could help start initiatives to look into promoting European issues and debates in the this country. I also took part in an activity which looked at the nature of youth participation in the continent and informing other young people about the programmes by groups, like BYC, offer to young people that demonstrated meaningful participation.

The group I was with represented a broad range of perspectives and understanding of the EU, which made the experience all the more worthwhile when some of us were not so familiar with the politics across the continent.

On Sunday, the event culminated in a special closing session in the famous hemicycle of the European Parliament, where young representatives fed back the outcomes from the five themes of the event. This included: Youth Unemployment, Digital Revolution, Future of the EU, Sustainability and European Values. As delegates expressed their views about some of the issues in this session, it was brilliant to see these constructive proposals in place for the Parliament to take into account after the elections. The closing speech was given by German MEP, Doris Peck, who praised the efforts of the young people who attended for the weekend.

Overall, the weekend was a fantastic example of the power of Youth Voice beyond the UK and that there are as many young people abroad who are as equally as passionate for a change in the current system. I left Strasbourg with many new friends and memories, as well as a sense there is more still to be done to engage young people in the UK with European affairs.

Kent Oliver Merrony, 20, Youth Representative I had always had a keen interest in politics, however, I always felt disengaged with European politics, not knowing much about the way it's run, how much it really does influence its member nations, the powers MEPs have and how important it is to be in the EU. EYE really did give me a clear vision as to how important the EU situation is. I was able to see past the ever more potent UKIP views and see how much value the EU adds to the UK. I learnt such a wide range of things, met some amazing people and saw how detrimental it would be for the UK to cut it's ties with the EU. However, I think it was agreed by all, that the EU does need to be reformed and seriously looked at for it to be at its best.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories Attending EYE made me realise how vital it is to vote in the up and coming European elections.

80% of all new laws made in member nations stem from the EU, with only 20% coming from your own parliament. This means your vote is extremely important even if you feel you are not directly influenced by the EU. I am extremely pleased I participated in EYE as it allowed me to see the significance and magnitude of the EU and European Politics.

Milton Keynes Amber Saunders, 15, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament Milton Keynes Youth Cabinet has three campaigns which are being worked on at the minute.

They are: • Curriculum For Life • Police Campaign • Getting Ready For Work With the Curriculum For Life, we have gathered information and resources for the subjects we have chosen for the curriculum (including subjects such as mental health, sex & relationships, community cohesion) as we are aiming to create a booklet that schools can choose to use as of the next academic year.

The Police Campaign is working on a scheme to get student representatives to work with their local police officers to discuss issues in their area as part of an independent scheme that schools can choose to run.

Getting Ready For Work have received results from a survey they created for young people and are beginning to work with multiple groups and organisations to try and improve different aspects of careers and access to information about careers (apprenticeships, work experience, CV writing practice) to improve it for the young people in Milton Keynes.

Milton Keynes has had a busy month! As well as the beginning of exams for many, much other progress has been made for the young people in MK. Youth Cabinet has had a representative on Healthwatch: MK for around a year now.

Recently, communications between us have decreased but now a specific group for young people is being made by Healthwatch: MK so that they can hear our concerns and ideas with dealing with two key topics: Mental Health and Access to GPs.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories In this Healthwatch: MK sub-group, young people are invited to join so they can contribute their ideas and work out how to help and deal with these topics.

Reading Aisha, 16, Youth Councillor This month as part of the youth cabinet and as a young person I attended some meetings, one of which was to review the CAMHS service in reading and to decide what could be done to make it better. The other meetings were for the youth cabinet where I continued to work in my chosen campaign group of mental health of which the aim is to standardize the education of mental health given to young people in reading. This is an important issue and has been for the youth cabinet for several years.

I also was invited to attend a meeting with local MP Alok Sharma to update him on the progress of the youth cabinet and see where he could support us. This month has been incredibly interesting as it always is being part of the youth cabinet!

We need more publicity to reduce the negative stereotypes young people are given in reading Beth Sercombe, 16, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament and Youth Councillor On Friday 23rd May, myself and my MYP (Ellie Emberson) as well as a member of Reading Youth Cabinet attended a meeting with our local MP, Alok Sharma. The meeting was hugely successful as Alok was supportive of both our local Youth Cabinet campaigns and highly engaged with the wider UKYP National Campaigns.

In discussions, we debated about the Votes at 16 campaign and considered many options for increasing political engagement amongst young people in Reading, such as though simplified party manifestos, youth consultations and events/ summer schools. He was also very interested and strongly supportive of the Curriculum for Life campaign, as well as our local Reading campaign, 'Your Future, Your Way' which aims to prepare young people more effectively for life after school by equipping them with the information, confidence and real life skills they need.

We explored ideas for a curriculum which places more stress on communication skills and real life applications (such as giving presentations and contributing in class), rather than basing all assessment on written exams. With regards to our local Mental Health campaign we worked on development suggestions such as potentially speaking on local Radio and attending a Primary Headteachers conference locally.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories We further discussed the key issues facing youth at this time, and all three of us were very passionate about showing how much young people had been affected by recent educational changes and the need for more transparency and communication in the future. We are really excited about taking these ideas forward and making real progress on both local and national campaigns in the next few months!

Ellie Emberson, 15, Member of Youth Parliament I have attended two Reading Youth Cabinet meetings this month where we have developed our three campaigns (mental health, child abuse and Your Future, Your Way) even further. I am in the child abuse campaign group and we intend on launching a survey in Reading shortly for youth.

We hope the results shall highlight where we need to aim our campaign at.

As well as this I met with a man who wishes to set up a Speaker's Corner (like the one in London) in Reading. We are hoping to have a quarterly event which is for young people as well as a monthly one which all ages shall attend. The youth event we hope to focus around UKYP campaigns this year and Reading Youth Cabinet campaigns.

In addition to this I met with a man from CAHMS to work out how the youth cabinet's campaign mental health can gather more momentum through the support of CAHMS as well as make CAHMS an even better service for young people.

Near the end of the month I met up with my local MP also, Alok Sharma who represents Reading West, the area which I live. We discussed the three youth cabinet campaigns and he expressed support for all of the three as well as provide us with links to further develop the campaigns. Also I mentioned votes at 16, he said he needs persuading regarding this topic as he at present does not feel it is beneficial. This lead on to the topic of turn outs in votes.

In the local elections in Reading on 22nd May there was a 30% turn out. We discussed why this is a low number and whether giving 16 and 17 year olds the vote would increase turnout. Myself and the two that attended with me expressed that young people feel politicians are not representative of us, our thoughts and opinions. We strongly argued political education needs to come into place so that the voting apathy does not continue.

Best of all Reading Youth Cabinet secured a fund from Starbucks for an event we hope to have in October. We are now to go ahead and prepare asap! :) Faith Adikpe, 17, Youth Councillor Our careers campaign group have begun to plan our campaign, setting out deadlines from present until the end of 2015 (taking into account school holidays, exams etc.) Our desired outcome is for the careers advice available at secondary schools/colleges to be improved and

Youth Voice: Positive Stories standardized, as we realised, from surveys that some schools lacked in the desired careers advice while others had plenty.

Jessica Rapley, 16, Youth Councillor At the beginning of this month, 3rd May, I completed my bronze Duke of Edinburgh along with 6 other young people. Also, with the youth cabinet, I have supported their campaigns and helped them move forward in them by helping them get petitions signed for votes for 16 and also by giving out postcards to advertise ElevateMe. We have progressed well and the campaigns are moving forwards.

Youth Councillor I, alongside with other members of the cabinet, have begun to plan our campaign that will hopefully be completed by the end of 2015. We are hoping to improve careers advice in Secondary School across Reading by making new, fresh connections with careers advice organisations and also standardise what is available at all the schools: to make sure one school does not have significantly greater and better careers advice than another.

West Sussex Nima Khorramrooz, 20, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament The origins of the Old City of Westminster pre-dates the Norman Conquest of England. When King Edward the Confessor began the construction of an abbey at Westminster In the mid-11th Century, he didn’t realize that one day it will have a population of 236,000 and people across the world will come to see its wonderful ancient political district of Westminster, shopping areas and the night time entertainment activities.

The time had finally come for me to go to Westminster and I -accompanied by Mr. Toby Wilson, my Children in Care Council worker- went to the Heart of London on 2nd April where we were invited to attend a meeting in Portcullis House.

The meeting was organized by a charity organization “The Who cares Trust?” and APPG “AllParty Parliamentary Group for Looked after Children and Care Leavers” who chose a very meaningful and passionate topic for all to think of and ask their questions base on it. The topic “Aspiration and Education” was focused on how well we could ensure children in care and care

Youth Voice: Positive Stories leavers are ambitious and are supported to go on to further and higher education. The APPG as a group of MPs and peers are very interested in improving the care system and in the meeting, Children, young people in care, adults with experience of care and professionals from across the country were invited to talk about ways to improve care system.

There was a panel of people at the front who talked briefly about the topic for a few minutes. Comprehending the fact that very important people were seated at the front, I as the representative of West Sussex young people was responsible for expressing WSCC’s concerns and views on this topic and how we can help West Sussex and England in general to improve care system. People including a Virtual School Head teacher, Student Welfare Officer, Children Commissioner were gathered to listen to young people and to be listened carefully by them.

Result shows young people in care don’t normally do well in GCSEs and A-Levels, even though they take them at the same time as everyone does. It could be happening because of placement moves, thinking about leaving care, etc. that prevent them from concentrating on their studies.

School is the only constant in most young people’s lives.

Government’s hope of supporting young people in care to go on to the higher and further education are looking slim; they have eased through many preliminary stages but were finding issues far tougher in the final ones. They have made decisive decisions on offering pupil premium to young people in care, in which primary schools get £953 yearly and secondary ones get £900 each year. It’s not an exact amount of money that schools are given as it’s changing and from this year schools will get £1,900 to help young people in care.

On the other hand, government offers HE Bursary to care leavers who wish to go to University before they turn to 25 and is about £2,000. Also, Virtual School Head teachers are set by government to check up on Schools and to monitor every single student to ensure they are in the right place. Local Authorities can give support to young people in care until their 25th birthday if they want to go back into education or training or just want to have basic skill courses, vocational training, apprenticeships, etc.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories The pupil Premium are now being managed by Virtual Schools, as many young people believed they’re not getting enough support from their schools and Schools in almost most cases don’t really support young people financially .

These are some facts that many young people are aware of, however some don’t even have a clue about them. Young people expect to be informed of what they are entitled to, once they attend college and university as part of their entitlements enquiry. But, do you think knowing all these can help you being successful at University and College? You might be, but the problems are yet to come…

Accommodation issues are causing many problems for young people. Many of them have to wait a long time to get to the top of the housing ladder, but simply as they go to University, they lose their places. Worryingly, young people in care whom wish to attend University is not also entitled to get housing benefit nor those in residential care homes wish to go to University are fully sure where they would stay in breaks.

What people discussed in the meeting and came out with was quiet interesting for those who are in these situations:  

Places on the housing register should be put on hold until young people get back from university… More reasonable, isn’t it?

National network for care leavers can help young people in preparation for university

People on apprenticeships complained about the level of support they get and the fact that they should get same level of financial and accommodation support that they get when they go to university, which everybody was agreed to. It came at a critical time that some accused support services to be unjust, believing people between 21-25 are only being supported while they are in education, however if they’re not, they are likely to be more vulnerable. They wanted this to be changed and expected to get more support even if they are not in education.

Many questions were related to teachers and their impact on young people’s lives, We all know teachers play important roles in educating people. However, do they know how to treat people in care? A very tricky question, it was felt most teachers are being wrong just because some of their students are in foster care or have physical or mental disabilities. They may think that they can separate these people from the rest of class or treat them differently just because they are different.

They may not think of negative effects it can have on people in care and that’s why young people raised this issue in the APPG meeting and wanted their host to do more for them. Expectation was enormous and many people in the meeting were complained about their teachers and how they are treating young people. Young people believed that the attitude of teachers needs to be

Youth Voice: Positive Stories changed. Some disagreed, as they believed teachers mostly don’t want to discriminate people but they do not know how to deal with people in care. It came to pass that some wanted Teachers to be challenged more. They wanted teachers to make it easier for young people to study and not necessarily expect them to do their homework all the time.

Following suggestions were also given to make teacher aware of young people in care:  Offering more initial trainings  Developing more professional programs  More education of aspersers and autism for teachers  Training designated teachers by young people in care, etc.

Apart from problems young people may have with their teachers, in some cases, Young people in care are sadly being bullied by their classmates. What local authorities can do to prevent young people in care from being bullied?

The outburst promoted our host to answer this question in detailed. Verily, they believed that Bullying affects many people and it’s not just restricted to people in care. Even others might be bullied. In general, young people shouldn’t feel ashamed of being in care. Suggestions were to be more education in schools for young people in care feeling that it’s absolutely ok to be in care and also compel LAs to fund schools more to offer these kind of activities or courses to students throughout different areas. We had enough time to ask as many questions as we want and happily, we were close to are heard by the government.

Questions on CPP and what young people expect form them took many a time by the panel to answer and finally they were agreed that:  

CPP meetings should be co-chaired by young people to ensure the issues regarding their education are picked up.

CPP should allow young people in care to get experience in working for the council, as people who are not in care go into the family firm

Thanks largely to Foster carers for raising questions based on their expectations. Many foster carers attending the meeting expected parents and young people to treat them nicely. In retrospect, top people at the front were agreed doing more cultural things to improve parents’ understanding of their children being in care by organizing more parent’s evenings, more LAC “Look after Children” meetings, etc.

After having 2 hours discussion on Aspiration and Education, our meeting was finished in about 8:00 Pm, whilst we met so many new people and learnt a lot on how we can improve our services throughout West Sussex area.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Below are some suggestions we may think of to improve our services:   

May need to put real life inspirational stories on yourspace website page More explanation on UCAS point and UCAS overseas status in which it has to be supported by article 26 for those who have leave to remain and are in need of getting funds Information about courses that are being provided to care leavers. For instance, Marriot hotel provides apprenticeships to care leavers.

Hope you have enjoyed reading this article. Bear in mind, Experiences you have in life shape whom you are but don’t define you. First key to success is to start inspiring in what you think success is. So think and work hard towards achieving what you want to be in the future. “Good Luck” Nima Khorramrooz, West Sussex Children in Care Council

Wokingham Youth Councillor Recently, Michael Gove has been making significant changes to the national curriculum, particularly at GCSE and A Level. His latest modification is the decision to restrict the number of foreign texts studied in English Literature in schools, so that students learn more British texts.

Whilst I appreciate that it is good to encourage more students to study more British texts, I believe the restriction is wrong, because it means fantastic American novels such as The Great Gatsby will not be taught in schools.

This month, I have therefore been organising a petition against this change, which has received 78 supporters in under a day, and am organising to meet with the MYP and DMYP of the area soon to discuss writing to Michael Gove about these changes.

I believe that hopefully, if the support for the petition and that of the Members of Youth Parliament continues, we might be able to prevent the loss of such fantastic works of literature from the English Literature curriculum.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

South West Bath and North East Somerset Edward Joseph, 16, Member of Youth Parliament This month was another month with no response from my lord, Lord Rosser but a hopefully a successful month of exams. After a pleasant meeting in the fine Georgian city of Bath with a local councillor, Nathan Hartley, in which we confirmed the times I would be volunteering at his music festival, Peasedown Party in the Park which many B&NES youths attend, I made my way to the council chambers to celebrate the new city Aldermen, who have worked as councillors for longer than two terms and then retired.

After the ceremony, I attended the council’s Annual General Meeting where the new chairman of the B&NES council was elected, at which I socialised with many local councillors and even arranged to meet with one, Simon Allen, in reference to some money his ward would be receiving. I met with Cllr. Allen and we discussed many youth related topics, and finally spoke about the 1 million his ward would receive over the next 10 years.

The plan is to set up a youth council for his ward who will get to decide what to do with the hopefully 10-15% of the money, and once I have set the council up they will be able to support local youth groups, local youth related projects and groups of children with Special Education Needs which work in cafes or as good Samaritans.

There is a meeting on the 27th May to talk about the money and how distribution will work, then on the 10th June I will stand to be elected to the board which decides how the money shall be spent and then I can offer some youth representation and create the council, who will have final say on how the money is spent.

I then presented the findings of my transport survey results as referenced last month to the Early Years, Children, and Youth policy development and scrutiny panel, to ensure the views of the local youths are being relayed to the councillors and to scrutinise the council on their slow progress or lack of efforts to make public transport more accessible and cheaper for youths.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Bristol Christy Nunns, 18, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament Earlier this month, along with a group of other young representatives from around the UK, I visited the seat of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, to attend the European Youth Event.

The EYE featured debates, talks and workshops on a number of issues relevant to young people, and to Europe as a whole. The event was an opportunity for me, and over 5000 other young people from around Europe, to learn about the European political system, and the many cultures of the 28 member states. Personally, I attended talks and debates on topics from Votes at 16 to entrepreneurship in young people, to big data and its impact on society; I met a great deal of inspiring young people, and I learnt a lot about the importance of international collaboration.

In general, I think the event was a resounding success, despite criticism from some media sources, and view the experience as one of the most educational and inspiring few days of my life. As a follow-up to the event, I am also now involved in a campaign with Bristol City Council's electoral services department (with whom I met this month), with the aim of increasing the turnout of young voters for next year's general election.

Isobel Trout, 17, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament I hope that in the following couple of weeks we will finally be able to send out initial letters to schools to ask them to join our pilot scheme for the Relationships and Sex Education Charter. The charter was created by the last Youth Council and we hope to have at least five schools engaged over the next year.

Christy (DMYP South Bristol) and I also hope to send off letters to encourage schools to get involved with make your mark.

We have also had a meeting with Cllr Brenda Massey to talk about the findings of the Education and Skills commission that Mayor George Ferguson set up when he came into office. It was interesting and promising to see that the commission have many of the same concerns and areas of interest as the Youth Council. We also discussed proposals for a bus card/ID scheme in Bristol.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Cornwall Tabitha Wethers, 17, Member of Youth Parliament Hello! This month's priority has been exams, so I have stepped back from my MYP duties a little. I have emailed 11 schools/colleges on the Make You Mark votes and so far 2 of them have got back to me, one being Saltash.net and the other being St Austell Cornwall College! I'm more than sure that more of the schools/colleges will sign up to do the votes too!

Also on the 29th, I will be attending the reference group meeting, as we have changed our tactics on how to target all young people in Cornwall (as Cornwall is a very large county) we now have split our reference group into 4 areas.

I'm hoping that many young people from my area will attend the meeting, not only to have a voice, but to understand that there are groups and people out there trying to do better for all young people; from this I hope that this will inspire them too. As majority of my time this month has been spent on revising and exams, that is all I was able to do this month.

Devon Kieran John Curtis, 17, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament During this past month myself and a few others from the team spent a day in Exeter shopping centre doing a survey on natural beauty. We all went into shops and asked them about what the biggest and smallest size clothes they sell, what clothes sizes they're manikins are, and whether the manikins had pins on to hold the clothing on.

Some shops were very happy to take part in our survey but there were a few that did not really want to talk to us. But at the end of it we gathered a lot of information and have started to finalize a presentation on our campaign to present to young people which we represent.

Dorset Cerys Pumphrey, 16, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament Hello again, I am now in the middle of my exams, so I, unfortunately, haven't been able to do much this month. However, I have had the chance to talk to a few of my constituents and I have made sure to hear what they want in Dorset.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories After my exams I plan to expand this in order to find out what most people want in this area, to help them try to achieve it, and to show that Dorset Youth Council care about their thoughts of how to improve the community. Looking into the future, I am also looking forward to a regional meeting in a few days where people from the south west will come together.

Grace van Zyl, 13, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament Hi there this is Grace van Zyl from Dorset and this is what I’ve done over the past month. As I’m a member of DYCE(Dorset Youth Council Extra), I attended this month's meeting where Simon Fraiz-Brown set up a workshop to get our views on how youth councils should be run and who they should include.

Then a week later myself and five other young people were on an interview panel where we interviewed four adults for a place in children services across Dorset. I really enjoyed this experience and had an amazing time because while it was formal we all had cups of tea and biscuits! I have also been researching into possibilities for cheaper sporting facilities (one of my manifestos) but as it is a national concern my youth worker has introduced me to… The Max card!

This card gives discounts to young people who are disabled or in care to use at the gym. I am going to promote and spread awareness of The Max card by meeting with the Fixers organisation and hopefully making an awareness project with them. I have also been updating my adopted Lord Knight of Weymouth with my progress and asking his opinions on matters arising. I have also adopted another Lord from Hugo Brookes of the British Youth Council, I have yet to receive the certificate and can't wait to know who's name is on it! As this my first time as an elected DMYP I have learnt many tips and met many new young people who are doing outstanding work.

Omar Sharif, 18, Youth Representative As part of the BYC group to attend the European Youth Event in Strasbourg, I learnt a lot over the event concerning the functioning of the European Union, importance of participation amongst young people and areas of improvement within the EU to benefit young people who frequently don't have a voice within the European Parliament.

As well as attending events surrounding areas such as the Youth Jobs Guarantee, and improving the link between politicians and their constituents, simply socialising with young people from across all the European member states who often face similar difficulties to us in the UK was hugely enlightening and beneficial because we shared ideas and solutions to common problems.

Looking forward, I intend to use the inspiring and motivational event to promote greater awareness and participation amongst young people in my University and surrounding area

Youth Voice: Positive Stories through localised events and by utilising social media platforms in the run up to the forthcoming European elections.

The trip was one of the most inspirational, overwhelming, motivational and hilarious trips of my life which I know I will hold with me and use to motivate me to make a difference in the future.

Gloucestershire James Bennion, 16, Member of Youth Parliament As I am sure many other MYPs and DMYPs are in a similar position of revising as much possible for the current and forthcoming exams. Therefore this leaves little time for Youth Parliament as much to my annoyance. However, Gloucestershire held a meeting with the Fixers group about launching our website campaign to encourage and make things to do for Gloucestershire youth more accessible.

We have now got an action plan which includes setting up a monkey survey to ask young people on their thoughts and ideas of the concept plan. Also to start gathering the vast amounts of information which will be needed to form the substance of the website. The meeting also highlighted the flaw with a system in place which has similar aims but does not deliver enough information because it does not have it and numerous features were non-operational. There, this accentuates the need for a bespoke website to show what activities and opportunities are available for the young people of Gloucestershire.

Isles of Scilly Zoe Jenkins, 14, Member of Youth Parliament There’s not an awful lot to update on for the Isles of Scilly. I’ve attended a few meetings regarding the youth shelter that I am trying to get for our main island (St Marys). We have a rough budget of around £4,000, and I’ve been doing a bit of research to see what the money could buy us! The reason that the islands need a shelter is simply to shelter the youths from the wind and rain (especially in winter) when ‘hanging out’ round town, but I’ve been faced with the problem that most of the designs that I looked at are open to all the elements, which is not what we’re looking for.

So I picked out a few designs and made a survey (which went out to the whole school, including staff) to see what design they liked the best and their preferred location. The results for location are as I predicted (in the main town area), but the most popular designs were really surprising; most people chose the ‘wooden picnic area’ one I only put on there as an afterthought, I

Youth Voice: Positive Stories immediately discarded this one myself because I thought it would attract families with young children.

In June I’m hoping to have a meeting with the planning officer from our local council to see if we are able to get planning permission for the locations we are currently thinking of. So I think that’s about it from me!! Apart from to say that I’m working with my youth worker to try and look for ways how I can attend the National Residential, as she can’t escort me, and with living on an island it will end up being very costly!

Mendip Eve Anderson, 14, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament This month has been really busy. I have done many council meetings as well as a short presentation on Politics in front of my whole year. I have been involved in Hypatia (House) council in which we are taking ideas from our tutors and taking them forward in front of the whole house in order to improve it. I am also a member of Youth Council.

At the moment our agenda has been mainly taken up by the twinning programme which I am involved in. However we have also been discussing how to improve the number of people joining Youth Council as our numbers are dropping fast. Finally I did a small presentation on Politics in front of my house which went well. Everyone seemed really interested and afterwards I had loads of people ask me questions about politics UKYPAG and youth council. So all in all a busy month.

North Wiltshire Kieran Mulvaney, 16, Member of Youth Parliament This month I have been emailing schools and writing letters to youth groups in preparation for Make your Mark. I have also attended a Wiltshire assembly of youth meeting, here we had a presentation from the local medical board and we also got a chance to give them feedback. The UKYP reps at the meeting ran a session on MYM where we planned what we will be doing in Wiltshire when MYM goes live.

One of the South West manifestos is mental health awareness as the stigma that comes attached to them. As a result of this myself and the MYP for West Wiltshire set up a campaign called, 'Lets Think About It !' it aims to reduce the mental health stigma and show people that suffer from mental illness that they aren’t alone and people are there to help them.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Plymouth Katherine Newnham, 15, Member of Youth Parliament Every week I have been meeting up with my fellow MYP/DMYP's to discuss the extent of our work so far. I am currently arranging meetings with councillors and local MP's from Plymouth to discuss what I can do with my campaign and support that I am being given.

Sarah Staples, 17, Member of Youth Parliament This month I visited Brook Green Special School in Plymouth to talk about democracy and participation, which links directly to my campaign of increased political education and awareness of young people. The session was incredibly useful at allowing me to see how young people felt about politics and ways in which to engage them with it, as well as hear directly from young people about problems that affected them. It also allowed me to introduce the Make Your Mark campaign and get a school's involvement. This is alongside attending Youth Cabinet sessions.

Poole Francesca Reed, 17, Member of Youth Parliament This month myself and Tom have both been busy with exams, so we haven’t got as much to report as usual – although we do have a few exciting updates! Throughout this month in Poole we have worked in partnership with Robert Syms, MP for Poole, to hold surgeries in Parkstone Grammar School and Poole High School.

These were great opportunities for us to speak to young people in Poole about their concerns, which frequently included issues such as bullying, road safety and crime – as well as our three priorities. Based on the success of these meetings, we are in the process of arranging more surgeries with Robert Syms, as well as establishing surgeries with Conor Burns, MP for Bournemouth West, Branksome East and Alderney, and Annette Brooke, MP for Mid Dorset and North Poole, allowing us to reach out to more schools and more young people in the area.

Thomas Rowledge, 17, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament Throughout the last month, we have been doing a lot of work on our Your Choice Surveys. We have focused on getting it out to as many young people as possible, which in turn allowed us to find out third and final priority for the local area this term.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories After collating the results of our Your Choice Survey, which was completed by over 800 young people in Poole, youth unemployment has come to the top as the number one issue for young people in Poole. It was closely followed by mental health and discrimination. As a result of this, our three priorities for this term are: Mental Health, Youth Opportunities and Youth Unemployment. We have many exciting ideas for the upcoming months and hope to do many positive projects revolving around these to ensure we can benefit as many people as possible.

Salisbury Philippa Poole, 16, Youth Councillor Hi my name is Philippa Poole and I am a WAY member for south west Wiltshire. I was elected February 2014 and am hoping that my time on WAY is benificial and useful. This month I have attended a WAY meeting on the 12th of May. In this meeting, we discussed where the money for health services should be given in Salisbury.

Our discussions and questions were taken and answered perfectly. As well as this, our UKYP member, Courtney Pickering, called the South West team over and we discussed "make your mark". Within this, we decided on ways in which we could spread the word and get the August ballets out. We decided on several way in which we would get the word out about the ballets. For example; schools, teenage market, posters and many more.

My targets are to get ideas into action and help the South West UKYP member with enforcing these plans.

Somerset Ellen Collard, 17, Member of Youth Parliament This month has been the start of exams for many people. So it's been manic! But I've been working on developing our own campaign on volunteering by finalising some workshops that we are planning to run in our local schools. I've also been looking into what ways we can engage young people, to try to ensure that they're not bored. My deputy and I are developing a promotional make your mark poster, which we are hoping will promote make your mark to lots of young people.

Eloise Chaplin, 16, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament I have been very busy with revision for my upcoming GCSE’s which has meant that I couldn't attend this month’s youth parliament advisory group meeting which was really unfortunate.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories However I was able to attend the monthly D/MYP meeting where we discussed how to increase the awareness of national campaigns and the Make Your Mark ballot. Myself and Ellen (the MYP in our area) made posters to publish and send around to local schools and youth clubs as an aim to promote youth parliament with a particular interest to increase awareness of Make Your Mark.

South Somerset Cat King, 17, Member of Youth Parliament First of all I had my local UKYPAG meeting, this is the Somerset branch of Youth Parliament. We covered a broad agenda, but one of the focuses was on MYM (Make your mark) which is a national youth consultation - as part of this D/MYP's from Somerset have decided to write to their schools and highlight what is going to happen regarding it so that way they have some heads up.

We also focused on group membership, more the merrier, and that is defiantly what UKYPAG likes, so our group will be looking are recruiting some new members! As I know a lot of people read positive stories, if you know a young person/s in Somerset that would be interested pop along to our website. Somersetyouth.co.uk I have also had communications with ITV Fixers, whom are going to help me create a video in aid of raising awareness about abusive relationships. It's a huge issue and I am really passionate about teaching young people the signs of an abusive relationship, as many young people have been recorded to say they didn't see it happening but looking back on it the signs were there all along.

And finally as a part of UKYPAG we run 'Youth Bank' which we are trained for, which allows us to distribute money up to the sum of ÂŁ350 to disadvantaged young people. And at a Country Fair I saw a stand which does horse riding/grooming for disabled children. I went over to speak to the staff/volunteers, and they said the most challenging thing is the costs, so I told them about Youth Bank, as they're based in Somerset, and I really hope we get some applications, as it is a real positive activity.

Swindon Ellie James, 16, Member of Youth Parliament I have evaluated results from an online survey I created that was helping me get representative views of young people for the development of my Fixers campaign. Also, I have created a team of three other young people who have offered to discuss and develop the campaign alongside me.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories On the 27th of May, I am filming all day for the ITV broadcast of my campaign. I have been preparing answers to possible questions and reviewing the exact message I want to come across in the broadcast. I have also organised a date for the creative meeting via Skype for the Fixers broadcast.

Deputy Member of Youth Parliament Again, I have been working on my exams so campaign work is slow. I am, however, working on writing an account about my experience with bullying, with which I hope to encourage others to share their stories and not feel ashamed about it. This story was supposed be completed with the submission of this positive story, however I lost half the document, meaning I have to remember and type it up again.

Torbay Sam McCarthy, 16, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament We've had a pretty dang good month.

We have: -

-

Cemented are team together :) unwillingly perhaps.

Discussed a new discount card for young people...and then got a discount on the discount card:) 1/2 price (Torbay discount card) Explored the possibility of linking with the Torbay youth interfaith forum to perhaps support their goals and help arrange trips and increase acceptance and availability of different faiths :) Started preparations on a apprenticeships conference for all of Torbay Realisation we going to be needing to find some funding from someplace :)

Possibility if appealing to a larger group of people for the make your mark vote via schools in other areas, which have not been previously targeted.

Sophie Hunt, 16, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament This month had been tight with GCSE exams but recently I have been working hard on our campaign for the Torbay discount card. In my local area, we as a constituency have met with the already existing discount card, to see if we can join forces and help in anyway shape or form, also we have designed posters to put around school to promote the discount card.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories The discount card is to allow young people 11 years + to get the discount card which can be used around Torbay (we haven't decided on a maximum age e.g. 18.) This would impact the young people of Torbay in many ways and mean the young people can get discounts in their favourite stores within Torbay and promote this fantastic card to their friend.

Wiltshire Charles McGrath, 18, Youth Councillor This month, I have been progressing with a number of campaigns, most notably the Salisbury Student Union's 'Change in Our Hands' campaign which concludes at the end of the month.

Members of the SSU have collected numerous signatures both on petition sheets and online and hope to present these to local Member of Parliament John Glen in the near future.

These will hopefully form a major part of our negotiations with local public transport companies over the coming months, and we hope to see some results regarding the aims of the campaign to see public transport become more affordable for young people who use it to travel to school or to recreational activities regularly, and for the quality of service to improve - by the beginning of the next academic year in September.

I have also represented the local Youth Advisory Group at the three-monthly Salisbury Area Board meeting, relaying the outcomes of discussions with the local Air and Navy Cadets about the establishment of a community board representing the views of members of these voluntary organisations. This board would have strong links with the YAG and would organise a number of events for the benefit of young people, regardless of whether they are members of these organisations or not.

For example, the Cadets currently wish to hold a careers fayre event in the Salisbury Guildhall over the summer holidays. We as the YAG have agreed to facilitate such an event by organising the venue through discussions with Wiltshire Council amongst other things.

Further, the Youth Advisory Group has discussed the changes to the youth services in Wiltshire which were voted on during a Full Council Meeting on Thursday 15th May. The result of the vote saw the proposed 'community model', the Council's preferred option, being approved. Although this will inevitably mean drastic changes to the way in which youth services are run in Wiltshire, the YAG will hopefully be able to ensure that such changes are made in a way that does not harm the wellbeing of Salisbury's young people.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories Chloe Lintern, 15, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament & Youth Councillor This month has been much busier than April anyway! With exams creeping closer and closer each day most of my time has been spent revision however I attended a Wiltshire Assembly Meeting where we looked at many things including the new blog that is in the process of being designed for young people to find us and contact us. This will be linked in with Sparksite, our current website for young people in Wiltshire, and so many more young people will be able to get involved and have an input on what we do.

The D/MYP’s for Wiltshire ran a section on Make Your Mark and ideas on specific youth groups to contact as well as ensuring that schools were targeted and already North Wiltshire has 3 schools signed up for us to go into and do assemblies before the summer holidays!

Agenda for Action is our local agenda of campaigns for 4 years at a time and currently we are in the process of writing up the draft wording around what we should campaign on based on the finding we received at the residential back in April. Hopefully the final wording should be finished soon as well as a design, but also our Fixers project should be ready to roll with soon, after the research bit is out of the way!

Another very exciting moment this month, was when I was picked to be an ambassador for Model Westminster, who bring young people from across London to come together to have a further their interest of the society we live in. For two days the students stimulate the British Government and manage their own constituency.

Over the next year they want to widen the competition to across the UK and so hopefully some young people from Wiltshire will be involved over the next couple of years! The main event that I attended this month was the conclusion as to what will happen to our youth service here in Wiltshire.

Over the last 10 weeks a public consultation was ran regarding people’s views on what should happen with the youth service and in total 23 face to face focus groups were ran which helped shape the new model. The new model will see communities having a pot of money each and it is up to them to spend it based on what those young people want. Many questions were asked about the new model including one from Kieran on behalf of Charles about how vigilantly the money will be given out.

Overall it was a good meeting despite not being able to stay to the end but to read more you can read it here: http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/latestnews.htm?aid=151768 Overall it has been a busy month with much more to come even though the month isn’t over yet!

Youth Voice: Positive Stories Our next UKYP Convention is 29th of this month and me and Lee (Deputy member for East Wiltshire) are giving a presentation on #breakthecycle which was an anti bullying film released during anti bullying week back in November and a young commissioners meeting has been set for the beginning of next month! Good luck to anyone sitting exams as well!

Courtney Pickering, 15, Member of Youth Parliament This month I have been emailing several schools about Make Your Mark. In total I have currently emailed sixteen schools regarding Make Your Mark. I have had two replies so far, one of which asking me to go into the school and present a assembly to them in September about all of the fifteen points and what Make Your Mark is.

Another response I had was for me to send them a PowerPoint with all of the main key points for them to present and send me the feedback and give me the results of their school. With our Seven Thousand targets we have to engage as many Young People as possible. To do this we are also in the process of arranging a stall in our local town in Salisbury and we are also going to email Leisure’s Centres and Sports Groups. We are also trying to get a slot on the local Radio Station.

I also attended a Wiltshire Assembly of Youth Meeting where were spoke about the five year Healt Plan and our views on this. This was good because it is engaging Young People with their future of NHS and allowing us to help make decisions.

Lauren Goldson, 15, Youth Councillor Hi I'm Lauren Goldson, and I am part of The Wiltshire Assembly of Youth. This month I have taken part in a meeting for WAY. This consisted of a talk from an NHS representative outlining what their forthcoming 5 year plan was and how they were going to reach their targets. While here we also discussed the new WAY website put together by myself and Kieran Mulvaney.

This includes things such as get involved, gallery and meet your member. In the coming months I wish to make myself more involved in campaigns within my school such as the ZT campaign and start to promote this again as it has died down since it was first introduced and hopefully make a start on working towards the agenda for action along with the other members of The Wiltshire Assembly of Youth.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

West Midlands Dudley Connor Hill, 14, Member of Youth Parliament and Youth Councillor As I am on the management team for my youth council we look after all the meeting planning and also to make sure everyone is OK. We had feedback from the youth voice residential at the last meeting; everyone had learnt so much it was a great start to their year. Also at the meeting we had a PC Hall come in to talk about the Violence and Terrorism Unit within the police force.

This was very insightful as he told us all about the process, would you believe it would take around 66 people from the police force just to investigate 1 person!

We also discussed our campaign which we decided from make your mark last year which was zero tolerance to bullying in schools. We had our anti bullying coordinator come in and talk about the scheme that is in place for schools. We also had a talk about setting up our own dispatch box inspired by the UKYP Procedures Group (thanks guys). We are now looking forward to talking about the new social media policies and working with DYC for the next year. As an MYP I have been working alongside the red cross to talk to MP's about first aid lessons in schools I hope to put this into action before 2018 as this is an important issue which I consider to have complete relevance in schools.

I want to just encourage people to do their best in whatever path they take, have a good month everyone!

Staffordshire Fern Jobling, 17, Youth Councillor Greetings from Uganda!

At the beginning of March Staffordshire’s Youth Action Kouncil received an email from Uganda asking if they would like to form a twinning programme and share their resources with the Sironko Youth Council.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories Currently, the main issue facing young people in Uganda is the lack of knowledge around human rights, and the continual issue of HIV awareness. Sironko Youth Council asked YAK for their knowledge, resources and contacts around human rights, to enable their youth council to deliver human rights training to surrounding schools and villages.

Two months further on, YAK recently received an email to say the training had been delivered successfully and, thanks to UNICEF for proving leaflets, posters and training kits, was able to reach more than their original target of 100 young people!

Fern Jobling said ‘I think it is amazing to see what a success the human rights campaign has been in Uganda. With the help YAK has provided, hopefully more young people will be aware and protected by their human rights! It has been so inspiring for us to see how much hard work Sironko Youth Council have put into this, and how much we take for granted over in the UK’.

With the Human Rights campaign a massive success, Sironko Youth Council is hoping to set up another campaign that will be launched December 2014.

Overall, YAK has been fully inspired by the new friendship in Uganda and is looking forward to working with them in the future!

Joe Porter, Youth Councillor First Time Voters: let’s be logical and use our vote In just over a week’s time it will be polling day for the European elections. Around 75% of the population are registered to vote –– and yet only 65% of us voted in the last General Election. So what’s going wrong?

One reason is the historically low voting turnouts amongst 18-25 year olds. However, this needs to fundamentally change so politicians become more accountable to young people.

Last week I turned 18. Becoming an enfranchised citizen was my best birthday present ever.

Why? Because nobody can ever take this voting right away from me. The electoral system needs to be made more inclusive and accessible for all groups of society to ultimately strengthen the transparency of our democracy.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories Many first time voters not voting can be the result of: disillusion, “it makes no difference who wins”; apathy, “an individual vote won’t make a difference”; alienation, “politics is not for young people”; voting being too time consuming; and most importantly a lack of knowledge about party politics and how to cast your vote. These factors all seem to disproportionately affect the youngest sections of the electorate, even though our votes are equally as important as the rest of the population’s mandate.

Young people are reported as the most likely of all groups to talk to family and friends about politics – but the least likely of all groups to vote. The record turnout of last year’s UK Youth Parliament’s ‘Make Your Mark’ ballot received a mandate of nearly half a million ballots proves a growing interest in democracy and a potential for growth in first time voters in 2015. Therefore, young people are interested, but feel as if “no one party stands for me”. We just need to broadcast the message more effectively through appropriate means of communication to make the system more relatable, understandable and inclusive to first time voters.

The apparent apathy in election politics displayed by many 18-25 signals a direct challenge to citizenship education as it constitutes a significant barrier to improving turnouts. These European elections are of profound importance because the EU makes decisions that directly affect our daily lives: the water you drink, the air you breathe, the food you eat, the energy you use.

Members of the European Parliament have an important role to play when it comes to the future of Great Britain, across Europe and globally. In order to reform Europe and regain our national powers back we need a strong team of MEPs, with a good mandate of votes to make it happen.

The elections are taking place during a period of political uncertainty and as our economic recovery gathers momentum, will shape EU politics for the next five years. Through the ballot box, voters will have the chance to breathe new life into the European Union and to begin a more transparent and positive future for the European project, where Britain’s best interests come first.

Once you’ve received your polling card through the post, you can then enter your nearest polling station, put a cross next to your preferred candidate and cast your vote on the 22nd May. If you need a helping hand at the ballot box, then it is worth visiting the BYC’s League of Young Voters website for impartial information on these elections.

Let’s resolve this deepening crisis in our democracy. Let’s prove we’re not negative towards political elections. Let’s become more civic-minded and put the life back into the nature of British democracy. Voting is non-existent in some parts of the world. But here in Britain it is a right – so let’s be logical and use our vote.

Stafordshire Hundred Event – 14th April 2014

Youth Voice: Positive Stories Youth Councillors Fern Jobling and Joe Porter, who are also the Chair and Media Officer of the Youth Action Kouncil, represented young people at the Staffordshire Hundred Event on 14th April. The event was a gathering of key decision makers and business leaders from across the county that meet a few times a year to discuss issues and policies affecting people’s daily lives across Staffordshire.

The ‘Health and Social Care Economy’ was the main topic of discussion on the round tables in the Staffordshire University conference room. Guests had the pleasure of being Left to right: Joe Porter, Rt. Hon. Stephen Dorrell hearing from the Leader of Staffordshire MP, Fern Jobling County Council Cllr. Philip Atkins, Cabinet Member for Health Cllr. Ben Adams and Chairman of the Health Select Committee and former Health Secetary, The Rt. Hon. Stephen Dorrell MP. During his speech, Mr Dorrell spoke of the complex issues which our health economy faces in the 21st Century.

Another hearing from the speakers, delegates were given the opportunity to discuss the issues highlighted in the speeches within their mixed table groups. This was then followed by a question and answer session with Mr Dorrell about the health economy and specifically the challenges faced by the Mid-Staffs NHS Trust.

YAK Chair, Fern Jobling said that: “Staffordshire 100 was yet again another thought provoking evening. Being able to represent young people and share their most important issues surrounding health was a fantastic opportunity. If some of the plans mentioned during the evening do go ahead, I feel young people within the system would greatly benefit, and it would be even better if they have an input into how this is done.”

YAK Media Officer, Joe Porter speaking after the evening commented that: “It was a privilege to represent young people from across Staffordshire at this fantastic gathering of countywide decision makers and business leaders. Fern and I were able to demonstrate to all the other delegates that young people care and do deserve a say on all matters affecting them such as in this case the Staffordshire health and social care economy. I hope YAK continues to be invited to the Staffordshire 100 events so that there is always young people on the decision making table.”

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Warwickshire Agatha Hunt, 16, Member of Youth Parliament The Warwick Forum, the representatives to Warwickshire Voice for Youth which come from Warwick, have been working together to create a campaign following a grant of ÂŁ150 given by the local association of Youth Clubs and Voluntary organisations.

This concluded in a night at Dale Street Methodist Church in Leamington Spa, where we were given the opportunity to present our campaign. The campaign is entitled "Think Before You", which with a variety of ending such as "drink it", "do it", "send it" and the very current "nek it".

It aims to challenge young people to think about the consequences of doing something before doing it. We also had the opportunity to view some other campaigns, from the girl guides to local music projects to the children in care council. It truly demonstrated the importance of young people in our local community and was a real eye-opening opportunity.

Member of Youth Parliament We have had a meeting with all MYP/DMYP and VOX members at shire hall in Warwick. We were approached by a company who are looking to privatise youth parliament and other youth activities in the area. I personally did not agree with this. We also went away into our focus groups to concentrate on areas and things we will do in the future.

I strongly disagree with 'Community Catalys' trying privatising youth parliament and getting involved with other youth activities.

Youth Councillor As a part of youth council for Warwickshire I have contributed to our team of young people by getting involved in our campaign for cheaper transport as I feel strongly about this. We have planned our next steps and are looking forward to seeing how they are going to work! I believe our area is going to make a difference this year and we are going to get what we and other ypung people want!

Support and hard work and dedication is all we need and I personally think we have them! I think it is important for all young people to be involved in campaigns like ours which is why we are going to carry out a petition and I am going to present our campaign to my school to try and get more people involved! Warwick youth forum have already done a project called 'think before you...' which was to try and get young people to realise the harm caused when drinking, smoking, bullying etc.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

We presented this project at a presentation evening to local youth groups. It’s hard to tell if this was successful but I think the people who saw our presentation took something positive away from it. We can make a difference if we feel strongly about an issue and we are dedicated to make that change... as a member of youth council I want to get other young people involved!

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Yorkshire & Humber Barnsley Anton Dobson, 13, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament So going back to the April training residential Barnsley youth council have placed votes at 16 on the Barnsley council and will be presented in the ward meetings also we have took leadership roles for example young reporters, I'd cards votes at 16 etc... And also we are also in contact with health and care stop smoking Barnsley liberias and we will be looking at those to see how they effect and help change negative stereotypes if christen to a positive stereotype of young people Callum Malyanm, Youth Councillor With support from our Youth Participation Workers we put together a promotional event in our schools. The idea was to make the students more aware of our work and what we do. We held a quiz with various prizes to attract the students to our display. The quiz was all about the youth council so this was a fun way of telling them about us. In my school, Dearne Academy lots of students took part and the event was successful.

Thomas Yems, 18, Youth Councillor I began May with a Barnsley Youth Council meeting. We constructively engaged with plans for a new Barnsley Library, and committed to their development over the coming years. We were visited by Penny Greenwood, who asked us for our input in the Public Health Service in Barnsley, and committed to a continued relationship.

In this productive meeting, we also had a guest from the Young People’s Stop Smoking Service, to ask us our opinions on the best ways, methods and techniques to encourage young people to stop smoking. On 29th May, I will present Votes at 16 to Barnsley Council. This ability demonstrates the connections between the adult Councillors and the Youth Councillors in Barnsley.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Leeds Beth, 17, Youth Representative Child Friendly Leeds Young Advisors: Child Friendly Leeds Awards I never thought that when a couple of my friends and I went to the Leeds City Museum last summer that I would ever have the opportunity to put on a show like this! I just thought I would be standing in on a couple small events. Never did I think that deciding to go inside the museum when we saw all the banners would amount to this.

On our first meeting, we all met at the City Varieties Music Hall (the venue for the event) tin a really awkward circle and I honestly never thought that it would change from that. Being quite a reserved person, there wouldn’t be a chance of me being the first to come out of my shell and make it bit more comfortable.

But the more meetings we had, I grew a whole lot more confident and actually held conversations with the rest of Y Productions (our youth planning group) and the people who helped organise the event... Maybe it was the biscuits that were provided every week for us?!

We started out writing on large sheets of sugar paper with felt tips with even the wackiest ideas being wrote down like a police arrest and an acrobat dangling from the ceiling. Then we moved to tables with orange headings- never forget the orange. The more the weeks went by, the more formal and organised it became, maybe that’s an OCD streak settling in!

It didn’t take too long for the actual awards event to come by and we were rehearsing. Everything was here. Everything that we had been working on for months, all the hard work was to finally pay off.

It didn’t really sink in until I had the headset on my head and I was giving the 5 minute call out within my role as stage manager. The night went

Youth Voice: Positive Stories pretty smoothly and very quickly. The crazy thing was seeing the performers I had scouted from the Breeze website on the stage instead of looking through many videos that they had uploaded on YouTube.

When the show had finished, I couldn’t help but sense an overwhelming feeling of proudness and achievement. How a group of seven young people and a team of professionals helping, could make this happen. How so many people left it in our hands and trusted us to put on the best show we possibly could. And also how many people make such a difference to Leeds.

To see a video about the first Child Friendly Leeds awards, use this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av6tFtiAzYE Charlotte Williams, Young Mayor Leeds Children’s Mayor Last month I was looking forward to the launch of the Yorkshire children of courage awards bit sadly this had to be postponed until late June, so now I will have a busy couple of weeks attending that and the Tour de France Grand Depart in Leeds City Centre, which is very exciting.

It has been a quiet month as Leeds Children's Mayor but a very busy month for me in Year 6 as we had a week of SATS tests.

I survived SATS and this is how you can too; 1) You'll need something sweet, sugary or just plain delicious (I had toffee) 2) You'll also need air (preferably fresh air but any air will do) and extra break time 3) Finally you'll want to have the 2014 papers as they were easier than the previous year’s papers.

That is how to survive SATS! John Wadsworth, Youth Councillor Leeds Youth Council The LYC has progressed steadily in its two primary campaigns, road safety and disability awareness; we have begun to draw together our ideas for the road safety film and the disability awareness working group have been moving forward with the development of their PowerPoint and program of activities.

An exciting opportunity has emerged in recent weeks, next month, the Leeds Children’s Trust Board, a leading panel of decision makers, will be turning over their meeting agenda to a number of youth voice groups. In cooperation with our new Members of Youth Parliament and the have a

Youth Voice: Positive Stories voice council, we intend to use this opportunity to network with and lobby the board on the issues that matter to the city’s young people.

As usual, this month the LYC has taken part in numerous consultations from various departments, this month we assessed a proposal to allow cycling in the city’s parks. We were eager to debate the issue and although members did raise concerns about safety and access to parks, the group as a whole agreed to support the proposal. Also, Leeds has recently been highlighted as a black spot for oral health, with young people reportedly having the worst teeth in the UK; of course the Youth Council were keen to tackle this key issue and we had a productive exchange with the Leeds oral health team.

Finally, the LYC executive took inspiration from UKYP’s ‘adopt a Lord’ scheme and decided it would be a positive step if all of our youth councillors were able to shadow their City Council counterparts.

With 99 City Councillors it promises to be a mammoth task but we hope it will help push through reforms on a whole range of young people’s issues.

Prosper Adam, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament In our recent meetings we have discussed and have decided to organise an event in Leeds where all young people interested can come and learn more about the UK political system .This is to help increase awareness in young people of the UK political system, the different political parties and how the voting system works.

This event will give young people a chance to be politically active as they will take part in activities that will make them know and become well versed with the UK political system. In the near future we hope this will increase the participation of young people in politics and raise their interest in it as well. As one of the aims of the United Kingdom Youth Parliament is to increase political awareness in young people this event will enhance this aim.

I am particularly looking forward to this event as I believe it can prepare young people so when they are of voting age they can make well informed choices, this event could also increase the number of participants in our national campaign to reduce the voting age as young people will be made aware of the impact and difference their participation can make

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Rotherham Toni Paxford, 15, Deputy Member of Youth Parliament This month has been fabulous! The first thing was being invited to speak at the Mini We day in Leicester about bullying and its impact on young people. I started writing a speech for this event and planning an experience of a lifetime when I received an email.

The email was congratulating me on being nominated for a national diversity award under the category of positive role model. It was obscene! Everything I ever did was purely out of enjoyment and passion- but to be recognised for what I do made me feel amazing! Currently I am collecting votes and trying to be short listed to top off the occurrence, but I have until July to collect as many as I can so all hands on deck to publicise my nomination and persuade people to vote.

Wakefield Deputy Member of Youth Parliament Wakefield has been busy securing stall at galas and fetes to collect signatures for C4L! Also Simran Jandu who is an NCS graduate, is moving up the board and is now recruiting more people herself!

York Dominic Fairbrass, 14, Member of Youth Parliament Over this month focus has been specifically on the structure of youth council, collecting opinions within YC and searching for ways to make youth council more youth led, to ensure that young people’s voices are heard on issues they feel more passionately about and to try and find more effective ways of running our local YC. We have also been making preparations for an upcoming presentation on mental well-being and best practise in schools for a local head teacher’s conference.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Katie Ward, Youth Representative This month, I along with the Steering Group (SG) in Yorkshire and Humber have been working on planning Convention 1 in York. At the end of April we had a Steering Group meeting, in which we planned 2 conventions and each SG rep had a few tasks to do over May. We have been inviting speakers, planning workshops and working as a Collective to create an awesome Convention! Personally I have secured another school for Make Your Mark and have given out lots of Lords to excited Youth Voice Reps, so hopefully we will get some responses soon!

Finally well done to Hannah from North Yorkshire, who is now my Vice Chair and Laura Bensley who the SG Secretary! Commiserations to all the other candidates.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Northern Ireland Belfast South Perrie Mackeever, 16, Member of Youth Parliament It was lovely to meet and chat to First Minister Peter Robinson last night at the Ramada Plaza Belfast about my campaign of increasing the help and support given to those suffering a mental health issue by firstly increasing awareness of the matter, Peter agreed with need of something to be done and supported the campaign .

Along with meeting Edwin Poots MLA Minster of Health, Social Services and Public safety who gave me his business card as he was keen to talk more and very interested in my campaign of increasing the help and support network given to those suffering a mental health illness by firstly increasing the awareness of mental health within society. Other than that I have been publicising the mental health week and the #antisuicide day which was on the 13th of May 2014

East Londonderry Member of Youth Parliament This month I met up with some young people to have a brainstorm on what facilities are in our area and what facilities would be beneficial for young people. I created an online survey to see what groups young people in the area currently participated in and if not why not. I was surprised by the results that not one young person that completed the survey was happy with our area.

Try all felt that more facilities were needed and the reason they didn't participate in current groups was due to the fact that they were too old, felt uncomfortable and they didn't interest them.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Fermanagh & South Tyrone Hollie Morrison, 16, Member of Youth Parliament This month I talked with Phil Flanagan about my manifesto issue along with other issues and have arranged a second meeting. As the Elections were happening this month, as the candidates were visiting houses to get support, I asked them their opinion on a range of issues.

I have also been writing letters to our education department and John O'Dowd opposing the closure of 2 schools in my constituency and the merging of those pupils. 86% of those asked do not want this to happen and they have been ignored, so we're fighting against that.

Foyle Niamh Haughey, 17, Member of Youth Parliament This month I have arranged meetings with local MLAs and met with a few to discuss the points outlined in my manifesto and also burning issues that affect young people in the Foyle constituency on a daily basis.

The meetings were very productive and in the coming months I intend to begin working on strategies to overcome issues regarding everyday sexism amongst young people and equality in general (overcoming sectarianism, racism etc).

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Lagan Valley Ryan Simpson, 14, Member of Youth Parliament

May 2014 was a reasonably exciting and busy month for me. At the end of April, 2 other MYPs and myself went to Stormont, our devolved assembly, to watch the debate on the Same Sex Marriage motion. We met the Sinn Féin chief whip, Cáitriona Ruane, who got us lots of photos with many MLAs. There are too many photos to put on my PS, so there should be just the one!

On the 10th of May, the second biggest cycling event in the World, the Giro came through Belfast. Whilst I was watching the time trials, I came across the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Máirtín Ó Muilleoir. He certainly sets a great example for all Mayors across the world, dying his hair pink for the Giro. We briefly got a chance to talk about cycling improvements to the city.

The following week was the Balmoral Show, the biggest agricultural event in Northern Ireland. As with the European election only one week away, politicians and parties were pulling out the stops for votes. I met the First Minister of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson. I do love the background I got the photo with. I also met Mark Brotherson the NIConservatives candidate and Alex Attwood the SDLP candidate.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

North Antrim Christopher Harkin 16, Member of Youth Parliament I have been circulating my petition for integrated education throughout Northern Ireland. I provided many locations with copies, including official offices, schools, MLAs, and other locations.

So far the most notable signees are three MLAs, and a mayor. There is also an online version of my petition circulating on Facebook and Twitter. If anyone wishes to sign it, visit the link to it on my Facebook page "member of the youth parliament for North Antrim".

North Down Joe Higginson, 15, Member of Youth Parliament This month, I have been actively engaging with many young people from across my area. I have asked them what they think of facilities, police and, my campaign issue, public transport. Also I recently attended a cross-border mental health conference in County Leitrim; I engaged in workshops and met lots of other young people.

This month, my work has been somewhat limited as I and many other young people have bad exams.

South Down Lauren Sloan, 17, Member of Youth Parliament This month I have been extensively involved in a local mental health campaign for better facilities for adolescents in Northern Ireland. I have written to the minister if health, as well as my own MLAs. As of now we are focusing on increasing awareness and opening people’s eyes to the lack of facilities. We are trying to gain the support of the people before we take any major action.

On the 29th April I attended the Same Sex Marriage debate in Stormont. Unfortunately the motion did not pass. I sent a petition around my school trying to gain signatures. As a result of the motion not passing, I intend to resend out the petition and I will gather more signatures to ensure that the young people in my area feel like they are being heard.

Whilst up in Stormont myself, 2 fellow Northern Irish MYPs and a member of my school's Gay Straight Alliance met numerous MLAs including Basil McCrea, CaitrĂ­ona Ruane and Dolores Kelly.

We had a great day although we were disappointed by the end result.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Upper Bann Neil Reilly, 17, Member of Youth Parliament In the build up to exams and election season things have been hectic! I met with local schools to discuss the SELB's verdict on Leisure and Sports facilities in the area and discussed with young people from the schools why they think it's important that these facilities aren't ignored. As well as this, as part of the League of Young Voters, I talked to my school and with local politicians about the importance of young people voting and encouraging them to do so.

I have also been carrying on planning my consultation on Education, on top of continuing to organise the event that I'm running after Summer with some other MYPs- and have even been in touch with some MLAs and Councillors about possibly taking part in the event.

West Tyrone Michelle Hamilton, 17, Member of Youth Parliament This month, I have been working on my campaign for cyber-bullying and conducting further research on statistics and broad facts about my issue. I have also been in contact with several local MLAs via email, in which we have discussed my campaign further.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Scotland East Renfrewshire Nicole Dempster, 17, Member of Scottish Youth Parliament In my area I have been getting involved with our youth forum's (ERC Youth) new campaign.

Following our consultation about the Single Outcome Agreement we identified four key themes that affect young people in East Renfrewshire. One of the themes was recreational activities in East Renfrewshire. Comments related to the cost of taking part in recreational activities and the lack of awareness of what was going on in the authority.

So ERC Youth launched a consultation at the beginning of this month asking young people for their views on the young scot card reward system as in other local councils it is used to access discounts and rewards for taking part in recreational activities.

Following our survey we were able to contact the council and we now look to begin the first stage of our work by contacting local businesses to see how they can support us to offer young people discounts for participating in local activities.

ERC Youth this month have also been representing young people by feeding into a consultation about Community Councils in East Renfrewshire and sharing our thoughts about how they can be more accessible and listen to what young peoples views are. In addition, we have worked with a youth led project that is making recommendations to the NHS about how sexual health education can be better taught in schools.

This gave the group an opportunity to share experiences and ideas about ways the curriculum could improve the teaching of such an important topic.

As an MSYP I have also spoken in front of Woodfarm High School with SYPeer Jessie Ling. We delivered a short presentation to all year groups on the work of SYP and Care Fair Share, SYP's national campaign that is calling the government to ensure caring does not mean compromise for young carers in Scotland.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories I also have met with East Renfrewshire's Young Carers group to promote the campaign and the benefits it could have for them. To add, myself and fellow MSYP Neil Wood arranged an Aye, Naw, Mibbe session for fifth and sixth year pupils at Eastwood High School. The project was created by the Scottish Youth Parliament to help ensure young, first time voters have the opportunity to make an informed decision about the referendum- from an impartial organisation.

The day was a great success with over 200 young people registering to vote!

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Support Worker’s Stories

East of England Bedford Emma Sparrow, Support Worker CiCC Projects 10 young people came aged 9 – 19 years to the CiCC Projects session in half term in May, where children and young people in care worked together to make a difference to services that support them and others.

The May meeting had CiCC members starting their animation project to create a recruitment video for foster carers, which will include their animations on what makes a good foster carer along with interviews with current foster carers, foster carer equations (see one below from one of the CiCC and one from a carer) and things to think about as a carer. 

Nice + supportive / kind x helpful = outstanding foster carer (CiCC member age 10)



Flexibility + understanding + caring + listening + supporting + time + fun + love = FOSTERING (carer age xx!)

The group also reviewed CiCC websites from across the country in preparation for working with the design team on theirs and worked out how they wanted to spend their CiCC budget for positive activities this year with lots of adventurous activities being named!!

LINK Vice Versa Our group of young inspectors / advisors / commissioners have been carrying out inspections of services and re-visits for those that have already had inspections. They have been to a number of social care teams and carried out a reinspection of Customer Service Centre and one of our hospital services meeting staff, carrying out an observation of the service and speaking to service users where possible. The group also met to evaluate their music event that they ran last month looking at what went well and what they could change to make the event even better next time.

They were still buzzing from the event which proved all the hard work was worth it!

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

North East Lincolnshire Andrew Garbutt, Support Worker Youth Cabinet decides 'votes at 16 and affordable transport' key priorities at Skegness conference Youth Cabinet warmly welcomed Jack Oldbury, Skegness Youth Mayor, to their first meeting over the May Bank Holiday weekend in Skegness.

Cabinet discussed the importance of better Cabinet enjoying lunch after meeting communication with schools and youth groups and have already started looking at the third edition of the Cabinet newsletter 'Blah' targeted at academy councils. Cabinet also deliberated a range of issues before voting for UK Youth Parliament's national campaign 'votes at 16' and the local campaign 'affordable transport'; mental health and well-being issues came a close third with concerns around self-harm and eating disorders (George, Chair, still plans to raise awareness of the issues).

Cabinet will be writing to seek views and support of key decision makers and support CallConnect's 'Get Around For A Pound' for U18s off-peak single ticket journeys. Cabinet believes affordable transport is essential in encouraging young people to remain in education, employment and training. Cabinet is looking to closer connection with Children and Young People's Scrutiny to contribute to some of Scrutiny's debates on education and services for young people

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Yorkshire and Humber Barnsley Karen Lovatt, Support Worker Barnsley fostering teams are currently undergoing a recruiting drive for new foster carers. One of the ways they are doing this is by holding an information evening for prospective new foster carers.

Barnsley Care leavers have been working in partnership with the fostering team to try and ensure that all potential foster carers gain a true insight into fostering. The young people were on hand all night to answer questions and share their own personal experience of their time in foster care.

At the end of the evening there was a lot of positive feedback gathered saying that it was really good having the opportunity to speak to the care leavers.

This is another example of how Barnsley MBC is committed to involving its looked after children and young people.

Clare Archer, Support Worker Green light for young persons' discounted travel The Barnsley Youth Council were given the task of helping Barnsley Council to revise the Mi Card scheme which gives young people discounted travel across the borough. Due to a reduction in budgets three affordable scheme options were put to the Youth Council. The Youth Council decided they could not make the decisions alone and chose to consult with their constituents. Young people from across the borough were asked which of the three options they preferred and why. A total of 525 responses were collated with the majority supporting the option of a 10p rise in fare to a new 40p all-day fare.

The Youth Council presented their findings to the Barnsley Council Cabinet, members agreed to continue the Mi Card scheme, with a new 40 pence all-day fare including at weekends. Therefore young people from Barnsley aged 5 to 18 years will continue to enjoy discounted bus travel.

Cabinet members supported the objectives of the Mi Card scheme to encourage the young people of Barnsley to travel safely and cheaply to schools, colleges, libraries, places of work,

Youth Voice: Positive Stories sports facilities and other leisure activities. The scheme has the potential to help support young people to stay safe, enjoy and achieve and earn a good living, Cabinet members were told.

Introduced in 2009 by the council in partnership with South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive, Mi Card promotes access to positive activities and use of library facilities by young people. Each eligible child receives a personalised Mi Card, which is shown each time they access discounted bus travel or use a library. The travel discount applies to all bus journeys in Barnsley, and those between the town and other South Yorkshire districts which start or finish in Barnsley.

Review Your School Eight secondary schools in Barnsley have completed their reviews. The findings have been collated and sent to the British Youth Council. The information will also be used to inform the Government Select Committee call for evidence on PHSE and SRE. Well done to everyone who supported this.

Leeds Harnek, Support Worker Student Leeds Safeguarding Children’s Board Young people have busy over the last month. They started by renaming the group, previously known as the Junior Leeds Safeguarding Board which they had inherited. The group agreed they would like to choose a more appropriate name and decided on Student Leeds Safeguarding Children’s Board (Student LSCB). They also designed a logo which was agreed by the Leeds Safeguarding Children’s Board. The logo is a derivative of the logo of the main board which cements the groups identify and will facilitate future campaign work.

Members of the Student LSCB participation in a carousel style individual interview panel to interview 6 potential candidates for the Team Manager role within the Safeguarding, Targeted and Specialist Services. Members contributed to the final decision for the selection of the successful candidates.

Members have been involved in designing and distributing a questionnaire to Leeds City College students to evaluate the ‘Know the Signs’ campaign.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Sheffield Emma Hinchliffe, Support Worker Sheffield Young Advisors Update This month has been a very busy month for the Sheffield Young Advisor team who are based at Sheffield Futures. They have been working hard on several different projects. Here are some of the highlights of their work over the last month: Scratchers work Sheffield Young Advisors have been working in partnership with the Sheffield Safeguarding Children’s Board to develop a factsheet for use on social media and other areas and also designing a Z-card to raise awareness amongst young people in Sheffield about Scratchers (someone tattooing illegally for money without the benefit of proper training). Once completed these will be distributed throughout the city.

Police & Crime Commissioner Survey analysis Sheffield Young Advisors have also been working hard to input and analyse nearly 3000 surveys that are young people’s feedback from an ‘Is it worth it’ roadshow that ran in 5 schools throughout South Yorkshire. These results were then analysed and fed back to the office of the police and crime commissioner who had commissioned this piece of work.

Fairness focus group 12 of our young advisors have taken part in a focus group around fairness in the city looking at things such as what fairness means to them, how fair they feel Sheffield is and how a potential campaign around fairness could be marketed at young people.

Mystery shopping training providers Sheffield Young Advisors have recently been commissioned by Sheffield City Council to carry out some mystery shopping type activities on some of the training providers in the city. This month they have had some initial planning meetings and looked at what they are going to inspect, how they will inspect it and what they are looking out for. The inspections will be taking place over the coming months and feedback will be given.

Promoting change Promoting change are carrying out focus groups throughout Sheffield with young girls aged 13 to 19 to find out from them what they feel is needed to support them in this city. As well as taking part in one of these focus groups, the girls in the team have been working hard on youth proofing

Youth Voice: Positive Stories the questions to make them more appropriate and understandable and over the coming months will be going out to deliver these focus groups amongst their peers.

Fearless Our specialist youth justice young advisors have being working with fearless (the young people’s version of crimestoppers) to look at how they can be involved in supporting the delivery of the fearless programme.

Shamima Miah (newly recruited and trained Young Advisor) getting her certificates from Involvement Manager / Sheffield Young Advisor lead Sarah Stevens

Youth Voice: Positive Stories

Youth on Board Awards The Youth on Board (YOB) Awards are an exclusively youth-led rolling award scheme that recognises innovative and exciting youth participation, both from young people and the projects and organisations that support them.

BYC's membership of young people wanted to celebrate the benefits of involving young people and encourage more organisations to engage young people in their work.

For more details and how to nominate, see here: http://www.byc.org.uk/trainingservices/awards/youth-on-board-awards.aspx

Inspiring Project Award Criteria for the award: You’ll need to demonstrate how a project has successfully engage young people and has met at least THREE of these criteria:    

Supported youth participation in decision-making Enabled young people to make a significant positive contribution at a local, national or international level Allowed young peoples’ creativity to shine Inspired, empowered and encouraged the involvement of young people from a range of backgrounds

Increased youth leadership and given young people a voice in how the organisation is run.

Name of Organisation / Project: Girlguiding: Go for it! Be the Change Go For Its! are themed activity packs that groups of Guides (our section for girls aged 10-14) plan and run themselves, working together as a team.

Youth Voice: Positive Stories The idea for Be the Change, was suggested by two of our young members, Isabelle Mahoney (16) and Amy Carmichael (19). After attending an event about the Millennium Development Goals in Chicago in 2012, Isabelle and Amy both came back buzzing with ideas for putting what they had learnt into action. They were surprised how few women were in politics worldwide (20%) and decided that this needed to change. They knew that in order to get more women in to politics, they needed to get more girls interested at a young age.

Be the Change was designed as a toolkit to give girls skills in leadership, decision-making, debating & advocacy. It also provides young women with the confidence to speak up about issues that affect them. The resource is designed for Guide groups to work through over four weeks, learning more about politics and doing practical exercises around building their own campaign.

What they campaign about is up to them, but they are encouraged to think about the issues that matter to them and explore ways that they can bring about change.

Be the change also gives positive examples of female leaders throughout history and examines the qualities that they share, encouraging girls to identify leadership qualities that they already possess. Be the Change gives practical examples and exercises of how to start a campaign.

Activities include creating manifestos, learning how to debate & creating campaign posters. Girls work in small groups to build their campaign utilising each individual’s unique skills to produce a fantastic campaign about something that matters to them.

Youth Led Award Criteria for the award: You’ll need to demonstrate how the organisation has met at least THREE of these criteria by:    

Been youth-led over the last 6 months.

Leadership of young people has made a positive impact at a local, national or international level.

Proactively allowed youth-led decision-making and a youth voice to shine through all of its work.

Involved a diverse range of young people.

Name of Organisation / Project: Side by Side - SAYiT Side by Side is a peer education project that uses young-people-led drama and workshops to raise awareness of the impact of homophobic bullying on young people. The project cateers for 16-21 year olds and consists of a 12-week training programme followed by weekly rehersals for the newly trained peer educators. The peer educators are trained to fill their self identified knowledge gaps in areas such as LGBT history, sexual health and drama techniques. They then

Youth Voice: Positive Stories use their knoweldge and expereince to develop a performance that reflect the reality of being young and LGBT in Sheffield today. They also create a worskhop which is used with school pupils to further explore the themes raised in the performance.

The peer educators are recruited from a wide range of networks and come from a wide range of backgrounds allowing for vast knowledge and expereince to be contributed to the performances and workshops they go on to create. Although project was initially founded as a partnership between young people and adult workers, the adult workers have taken continuous steps away from the leadership and handed it over to the peer educators themselves.