Advocacy WA actively fosters community connections between people who feel isolated because of their disability, location or both. Since the pandemic, we have particularly targeted young adults who were disproportionally affected by interruptions to their educational and social lives.
In our outreach to young people, we increasingly find that social isolation is a major factor in their lives and impacts their ability to make friends, engage in training or find work. Many say that they had been segregated in the school system and that careers and life-skills education was inaccessible to them for a number of reasons.
While finding work and training opportunities is crucial for young people with disability, it is unlikely that they will be able to compete on a level playing field unless they build their social capital and develop the skills needed to make useful networks.
Bunbury Schools Alumni Group
We created a community advocacy group in Bunbury targeted to young people who felt that they had lost confidence and social connections after leaving school. This group of young people aged between 15 – 30, is working together to create an organisation which will meet regularly to support people like themselves who have left school but failed to find suitable social, training or work opportunities.
The alumni group will be a regular face to face get-together offering advice about employment, further education and opportunities for social connection. We have supported this group to reach out to local service providers who will attend their meetings in a mentoring capacity and signpost to suitable training and work opportunities.
The group is in the set-up phase at the moment and plan to host the first meeting in October 2023. In the meantime, they are preparing to speak in educational establishments to promote their proposal. Both the experiences of co-designing this with their peers and the alumni organisation which will eventuate, are all contributing to a growth in confidence and social skills in many of the young people involved.
If you work in a school or service and would like to find out how you can support our young people in this project, please contact sara@advocacywa.org.au
