Unstoppables update

The team are very busy preparing for our first meeting of 2023 and we’re very excited to see our members, continuing their fantastic work into this new year.

Keep your eyes peeled for our next update from our first meeting as we have some visitors joining to do some work with our young people and we will be setting our priorities for the year. We have some exciting projects coming up this year and we can’t wait to share it with you.

One of our visitors will be our Local Offer Young Person’s Champion, Alice who will be doing some activities with our members. Alice has been working hard in her role and has been attending events to promote the local offer to young people at careers fairs, here is how it went:

On the 8th and 23rd November, Alice (our Local Offer Young Person’s Champion) went to careers fairs in both Yeovil and Bridgwater. She tells us about how she used the chance to talk to different organisations about education and career options, as did many other young people aged 14+ and their teachers or support workers.  

We had a stall advertising Somerset’s SEND Local Offer, which we shared with the people from Imagine the Possibilities. The main thing that pulled people into our stall was the giant Jenga. When they pulled out a brick it said something to do with Somerset’s SEND Local Offer and got people talking to us. 

Alice said: “I enjoyed the day and found it interesting to talk to people who had never heard of Somerset’s SEND Local Offer. The other bit of the day I enjoyed was watching people play the giant Jenga.  

I had an opportunity to go round and look at all the different stalls that there were at the two events. I even managed to find things that I would be interested in doing later on in life. 

This also helped me with my work for the preparing for adult life section of Somerset’s SEND Local Offer. I went round the stalls and saw what information they were offering. I picked up leaflets that I thought would be relevant to helping me complete the project. Particularly education options for post-16 and support for finding and keeping a job.  If I had any further inquiries about what the service was, I spoke to the person at the stalls. We also chatted to some people who offered to test out our new pages.  Keep your eyes open for future updates!” 

Could you be an Unstoppable? 

We want to hear your views on things that matter to you, so come and join us!  

We meet on the first Saturday of every month, 11.00am-3.00pm  

To find out more, please email the team SENDparticipationteam@somerset.gov.uk  

Or phone/message/WhatsApp Sian Smiley (was Wyeth) on 07976 809 773  

@SENDParticipationTeam @sendparticipation 

 Or complete our online form www.somerset.gov.uk/youthvoice