The October issue of 'Impacting on You' produced by Portsmouth Parent Voice is now available and includes lots of useful information.
Please click on the link below to view:
Dynamite Portsmouth
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The September issue of 'Impacting on You' produced by Portsmouth Parent Voice is now available and includes lots of useful information.
Please click on the link below to view:
Dynamite – Friends and Relationships
In April and May 2016 Dynamite focused its attention on the issue of "Friends and Relationships".
We did this as the young people who attended one of our events had suggested that we should focus on this topic. We also wanted to look at this topic because ‘community inclusion’ is one of the four Preparing for Adulthood Pathways.
We discussed the issue in our core group and then Dynamite went in to a College to talk to young people on a work skills course. We raised it informally with the young people we met and also held a pizza evening at the Frank Sorrell Centre that 11 young people attended.
The young people at the Pizza evening were split by age; as it was suggested by the core group that the issues affecting the older young people (19+) may not affect the younger young people (14-18).
How do young disabled people see their friends?
Young people with a disability see their friends in lots of different ways. Most young people had no problem coming up with long lists of the different places they see their friends including at college, youth groups, going to town and at activities like drama and sports clubs. A lot of young people also talked about how they used the internet to socialise with their friends either to arrange meeting up or to socialise online using social media and online video games.
One young person commented that due to living out of town and needing support with travel they didn’t really get to see their friends much outside of education.
The older young people at our pizza evening said that they mainly socialised with other young people with disabilities.
The older young people at our pizza evening also said that they mainly socialised in groups and that there weren’t as many opportunities to meet with friends one to one.
We talked about Education Health and Care Plans, most young people hadn’t heard of these before although remembered going to transfer meetings. They said that at those meetings they talked a bit about socialising but talked mainly about their future.
What are the barriers to Young People with a disability making good friendships?
Whilst a lot of young people use social media to talk to friends, some young people find it difficult to use.
Some young people felt that a lot of social clubs are more geared towards younger people.
Transport was a commonly reported barrier to socialising.
“It can be difficult to meet with friends because public transport isn’t always good”
One young person who attended an SEN school where year groups 10 and 11 are merged talked about having to leave friends from school when they go to college.
Some young people talked about stigma around people who come across as 'different'. Some young people had experienced parents of non-disabled young people not wanting their children to be friends with people who were disabled.
Parents were a common theme, a couple of young people said that the reason they mainly socialised with other young people with a disability was because their parents felt that they were vulnerable to bullying.
Other things which young people reported as barriers to making friends included bullying, conflict in friendship groups, lack of confidence to make new friends, and meeting people who are too loud or too touchy-feely which may put them off.
What can be done to help young people overcome those barriers?
Most of the young people on the work skills college course had had some form of independent travel training, they all said that this had helped them to see friends. It was mirrored elsewhere that help to travel independently helps young people to see their friends.
Young people talked about things they could do themselves like being confident in how they present themselves, making sure that they didn’t judge people before they met them and thinking about whether new friends would be positive influences.
“speaking to someone you know who can help you to see friends independently”
Some young people said that they would like to mix with non-disabled young people and that this would help to stop stigma.
Finally we asked young people, if it was their job to help young people to see their friends, what would they would do?
“sitting down with young people, asking them what they wanted to do and helping them to do that”
“having a list of all of the groups you can go to”
“encouraging parents to let us be more independent”
“help young people to feel safe”
“educating [non-disabled] people, and stopping prejudices”
Young people also talked about wanting help to be more confident with making new friends. They also felt that there weren’t enough youth clubs for only for older young people, 16+.
