Lincolnshire Young Voices

Lincolnshire Young Voices (LYV) is an award-winning pan-disability participation group that helps to improve the lives of children and young people with SEND. We research and act upon issues faced by young people with 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 committee members have lived experience of disability and are dedicated to making positive change. 

We meet every two months in several places around the county. 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 for 2023-4 are:

  • public transport and accessibility for young people with SEND - we are in talks with LCC transport and have visited Young People’s Learning Provision (SEND post-16) to gain views and experiences on transport. We also work with the independent travel training team, and look at the literature they share with young people with SEND
  • bullying in schools (SEND related)  - contact is being made with a range of schools about getting involved in order to seek insight and gain students’ views and experiences, hopefully making a school based resource to support key messages.

Lincolnshire Young Voices wants to make sure everyone knows who we are and what we are working on. Additional video clips will be added periodically.

Award winning training

Last year, with the backing of Council For Disabled Children and funding from NHSE, Lincolnshire Young won a National Association for Special Educational Award (NASEN) in the  co-production category for working in partnership and producing a short, inspiring resource for professionals with the help of Badshoes Films. 

‘A rough guide to not putting your foot in it’ uses the voices of the disabled community and national best practice to improve knowledge and confidence for everyone: professionals working or coming into contact with children, young people and adults with SEND.

This training is available free once registering with Safeguarding Lincolnshire 

Contact us

If you are aged 14 to 25 (or know someone) with SEND who might be interested in joining our group and making their mark, please contact us 

You can keep up to date with our latest work and projects on Facebook and X.

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