Positive activities

"Aiming High for Young People" provides an opportunity for all young people in England to get involved in shaping the leisure services they attend.

The ten year government strategy for positive activities began in 2007.

Now Mencap wants to make sure young people with a learning disability, their supporters and professionals are able to take this opportunity to make a difference.

Aiming High for Young People 

The key themes within the paper are empowerment, access and equality. The strategy aims to give all young people, including those with a learning disability, opportunities and choice in the design, delivery and access to positive activities such as leisure services.

The positive activities duty says local authorities should:

• provide all young people with access to at least four hours of leisure activity per week
• audit their youth population, including identifying young people with a learning disability
• audit the activities currently on offer to all groups of young people
• ask representative groups of young people, including those with a learning disability, what activities they would like to access
• advertise in accessible formats the opportunities available to young people., called the youth offer.

Additionally local authorities are being asked to give young people control of 5% of each council's youth budget from 2011, which will increase to 25% by 2018. This means young people will be involved in commissioning and possibly decommissioning leisure services.

The strategy also includes plans for the programme myplace, which will create over 70 centres for young people. Young people will be involved in designing the buildings and the activities that take place there. You can find out if there is a myplace project in your area on the myplace support team website.

How to get involved

Mencap wants to ensure young people with a learning disability take an active part in influencing and shaping leisure activities. We also want professionals to have the skills and confidence to identify, engage with and include young people with a learning disability in this work.

The following downloadable resources have been produced in partnership with the Council for Disabled Children (CDC) and the myplace support team.

• Taking part: How to have your say about what is important to young people
  An easy read guide for young disabled people aged 12 to 25 about how you can get what you want from the youth service where you live. There is also a guide on how best to use this leaflet.
• How to involve disabled young people in Aiming High for Young People
  A booklet for youth professionals about how to involve young disabled people in Aiming High for Young People.
• myplace guide
  A guide for organisations receiving myplace funding, explaining how to involve young disabled people, and a resources list for accessing further support.

You can also find out how Mencap supported a group of young people with a learning disability to research barriers and solutions for taking part in youth forums on the Wecan2 website.

Who to contact

We'd love to hear your examples of good practice of young people with a learning disability influencing the development of positive local activities.

To share your experiences, and for further information about Mencap's work on positive activities please contact:

Paul Smithson
Telephone: 0779 6948741 
Email: paul.smithson@mencap.org.uk