Where am I ? : 'Innovative Projects' > YPSU (Young People Speaking Up)

YPSU (Young People Speaking Up)

Young People Speaking Up empowers young people aged 11-25 with disabilities, learning difficulties or mental ill-health to speak up and be more in control of their own lives. Young People Speaking Up has grown rapidly over the past three years into an umbrella for a range of services and projects across Cambridgeshire & Peterborough. Over 200 young people access our services each year and our high-quality practice has been recognized through a number of awards including a national award from the DfES, a CSIP Award for Putting People in Control & a national Wavemakers award. .

Young People Speaking Up currently facilitates 5 types of services:

Self-Advocacy Projects:

YPSU in schools works with young people, helping them to gain confidence and self esteem, improving their ability to self-advocate, and helping them to take an active part in decisions that affect them. The project combines weekly Self-Advocacy group sessions focusing on teamwork, social skills and confidence building with individual life-coaching to support the young people to set personal goals and achieve them.


We currently have services in Samuel Pepys Special School, Cambridge Regional College, Marshfields Special School, Heltwate Special School & Meadowgate Special School.

Our weekly self-advocacy sessions in schools have led us to develop the Big Box–a toolkit which contains over 100 different exercises for young people (and everything you need to run them, right down to the dice!)

Click here for more information on the Big Box

One2one Advocacy Services:

YPSU's Independent Advocates represent the views of young people or support them to speak up and represent themselves about issues which matter to them. This includes support through a range of statutory processes including annual review meetings, care assessments and looked after child meetings. .

We currently provide an advocacy service in Meldreth Manor School and a countywide community one2one service for young people.

Consultancy & Training Services:

YPSU offers consultancy to enable services for young people to become more accessible for disabled young people. This includes training on disability, empowerment and person-centred working. All of our training and consultancy is designed with and delivered by disabled young people. YPSU is supported by a team of young people with disabilities who are qualified to deliver interactive training on a range of themes.

Two of our most popular training courses are:

1 ‘Don’t Diss My Ability’ - a course designed to raise peoples’ awareness of disability issues.

2 ‘Disengaged?’ - a course to help professionals to actively involve young people in having a say about the services they use.

Integration Projects:

These are projects which support a young disabled person to develop the skills and support circles they need to access their local community. This includes learning skills such as travel training, using money and social skills, as well as practical support from a non-disabled buddy to access community opportunities.

We currently provide this through the Activ8 project in the Fenland & the Getting A Life project in Huntingdon.

Participation Projects:

We engage disabled young people into being active participants and decision-makers in their communities. We facilitate participation projects in school settings, e.g. school councils, or in the community, through setting up Youth Forums with disabled young people.

This currently includes Particip8, a civic participation and campaigning volunteering project. The Particip8 Project is a project for young people aged 16-25 with learning difficulties and disabilities in the Cambridgeshire/Peterborough area, and in Barnsley.

The aim of Particip8 is to establish a Youth Forum every two months for young people to meet with each other, professionals (from voluntary and community organisations or public bodies) and the local media to achieve positive change for themselves and their peer group.

A group of 25 representatives represent the views of other young people at the Big Meetings (forums), giving their ideas and opinions about what is important to them. They want to achieve positive change for young people and make sure they are listened to and actively involved in decisions about services that affect their lives.

The Particip8 Project launched on Friday 7th September 2007 and the first Big Meeting was on Thursday 25th October 2007 on the theme of ‘Feeling Safe’.

HAVE A SAY, DON’T GET PUSHED OUT THE WAY!

For more information on YPSU projects
please e-mail Roger.Firks@speakingup.org or telephone 01223 566258

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