Lincolnshire Young Voices is an award-winning multi-disability participation group of volunteers that helps improve the lives of children and young people with Special Educational Needs and/or Disability (SEND).
We are funded by Lincolnshire County Council and supported by Lincolnshire NHS. Broadly, our aims are to improve services and raise awareness of SEND in the wider community.
Our friendly and supportive young volunteers have lived experience of disability and are dedicated to making positive change. We are looking for new volunteers under 25. If you know someone or you want to find out more, please use the contact form.
We meet every other month though communicate regularly. We understand that to inspire change we need to network and partner other organisations.
Our current work
Our service plan echoes our mantra of; 'together, our voices make a difference'. We are determined to help the people of Lincolnshire know what LYV do and how they can get involved.
Our priorities on Bullying and Transport are closing. Lincolnshire Young Voices:
- researched and developed resources based on student interviews and wider research. Resources have a SEND focus and are still available to download on the Family Services Directory (click the button below)
- delivered 16 anti-bullying sessions in 7 settings across Lincolnshire to over 170 students
- workshop feedback was positive with sessions being both informative and interactive
- Accessible Transport Survey last summer had over 600 completions
- held meetings with Lincolnshire County Council Transport managers and bus operators and shared the survey findings at Highways and Transport Scrutiny 27 January (at 9 mins 30)
Bullying in schools resources (See right hand side of linked page for downloads)
Have your say
New priorities will be agreed and shared in due course. If you have something you want us to consider, please get in touch.
Award winning training
In 2022, with the backing of the Council For Disabled Children and funding from NHS England, Lincolnshire Young Voices developed a training package which won the National Association for Special Educational Award (NASEN) co-production category for working in partnership and producing a short, inspiring resource for professionals around communication with the help of Badshoes Films.
‘A Rough Guide To Not Putting Your Foot In It: communicating with whildren and young people with SEND’ uses the voices of the disabled community and national best practice to improve knowledge and confidence for everyone including professionals working or coming into contact with children, young people and adults with SEND.
This training is freely available once registering with Safeguarding Lincolnshire (If your organisation is not listed use – ‘private organisations’.
Life after Lincolnshire Young voices
A joint statement by the previous co-chairs
Did you know that only 53.7% of working-age disabled people are in employment, in comparison to 82.7% of nondisabled people? This statistic alone shows us that more needs to be done to help people who identify as having a disability find employment, be given a sense of purpose, and to feel heard and valued. As former co-chairs of Lincolnshire Young Voices (LYV), we’re here to share how leading the pan-disability participation committee did just that and how the platform has continued to create opportunities for us.
If you’ve followed LYV since its inception in 2018, you’ll know that the group was set up to enable children and young people with SEND to influence positive change within service delivery across the county and beyond. As a committee, we felt there was no better way to do this than to be led by those who have lived experience of disability. This not only lent itself to the authentic and powerful voice of the group, but it crucially gave two people the chance to be in paid employment, develop their skillset and grow in confidence. The idea was that by making these contracts fixed term, it would allow the chairs to find their feet, flourish and carve a career path, so that other young people could then step into the role and continue to build upon these foundations.
Well, it’s safe to say that we (Emma and Jo) had a hard time finding our feet. As wheelchair users, we prefer to roll our way through life, but in February 2020 we began to put our stamp on LYV – a group that we already loved being members of. We started off as we meant to go on: enthusiastically preparing for LYV world domination. As with any game-changing plan, though, sometimes you have to go back to the drawing board, and the pandemic certainly made us do that. The committee has always embodied togetherness. Together our voices make a difference throughout the work we do so passionately, but perhaps more importantly, with the friendships and connections we’ve made by belonging to the group. So, amidst the questionable hair dos and toilet roll crisis, we became even more determined to amplify and empower the voices of CYP.
Within a state of flux, we successfully managed to:
- develop an award-winning online training resource which debunks myths for professionals communicating with disabled people
- connect and collaborate with a plethora of services across multiple sectors
- complete many of the priorities that centred around propelling the voice of our committee and other CYP on a local and national level
- keep our grey hairs at bay.
As they say, it wasn’t bad for a day’s work. The skills and opportunities that LYV has given us are too many to mention, but without a doubt being the recognised and reputable faces of CYP on behalf of Lincolnshire County Council and NHS Lincolnshire, set the foundations for our present-day success.
As the dynamic duo, our talents have fallen somewhere in the realms of being able to share our lived experience with a candid (somewhat cheeky) charm whilst keeping our jobs intact. We pride ourselves on being the conduit between the voices of our community and the professionals who make strategic decisions. We have always said we have winged our way into such opportunities and made space for ourselves at the table, but this couldn’t have been done without the confidence gained from our time at LYV.
Before handing the baton to LYV’s Nandi and Alfie, we were offered the roles of young researchers on a project lead by the University of Derby (UoD) and funded by East Midlands Children's Directorate via the SDSA. Alongside other young researchers from Rutland local authority, we get to co-research and co-produce the project which spans across the East Midlands to shed light upon whether CYP are getting what they want and need out of their EHC plans and SEND support. The reach of the project is rapidly gaining more traction and is grabbing the attention of professionals who can make a difference. In addition to this, Jo is also a research administrator for the UoD on a DfE funded project which focuses on action research and lesson study for educators working within the SEND and inclusion arena.
Outside of their collective plot for world domination, Emma utilises her advocacy skills as a speak out leader for VoiceAbility, acting as a voice for people of all ages who have a learning disability, their families and carers. Furthermore, Jo is a programme advisor for The Nora Project, a nonprofit organisation based in Chicago, whose mission is to create disability inclusion informed social emotional learning curriculum.
We’re not trying to blow our own trumpet, but we really do think we are on upward career trajectories. We love what we do and strive for more disabled people to be given the chance to thrive in employment. We’ll forever be grateful for LYV for this, and it brings us joy to watch the chairs and the committee as a whole, go from strength to strength.
By Jo and Emma