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Tabatha’s story – Disability Pride Month
Tabs shares their journey as a person with SEND finding employment at Kids, and empowering young people to speak up.
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It’s Disability Pride Month! As always, we’re celebrating the two million children and young people in England living with special educational needs and disabilities. They are all brilliantly unique.
Tabatha (Tabs) is our brilliant Youth Voice Coordinator working as part of Kids’ National Youth Team, a group they had previously attended as a young person. Here they share their journey as a person with SEND finding employment at Kids, and empowering young people with disabilities to speak up.
I’m Tabs. I’m a Youth Voice Coordinator working as part of the National Youth Team. I also have ASD, ADHD, hypermobility fibromyalgia and progressive bilateral hearing loss, and I’m an ambulatory wheelchair user.
I initially attended Kids’ youth groups as a young person with SEND. I was later given the opportunity to volunteer, and this led to me becoming a Sessional Assistant Practitioner with our play and leisure services when I was 18.
Kids supported me to undertake a relevant level 3 qualification while I was still attending some services as a young person. I worked hard to develop the skills to become a Sessional Practitioner. While this was great, an amazing opportunity came up in the form of a vacancy for Senior Practitioner within the Young People’s Engagement Group – the same group that had presented so many opportunities to me in the past.
After deciding that the worst that could happen was they’d say no, I applied and was successful. I’ve spent the last seven years advocating and supporting others to share their thoughts and opinions, be heard and create lasting positive change in their lives, wider communities and on a national scale!
“Our department is full of creative, passionate people who support each other. They recognise my strengths and weaknesses, and through collaboration with each other and with young people, we create methods and opportunities for lasting impact and change.”
Limiting this to three is so tough, as every day there are things that make me proud. But if I had to choose…
We were also part of the consultation development for the SEND Review and supported hundreds of young people to have their say. I believe we were one of the largest groups of young people to feed into the SEND Review, and this has led to continued engagement with the Department for Education (DfE), the improvement plan and the change programme.
Celebrate each other! Celebrate our individuality and differences! Celebrate the ‘I can!’
Everyone can have a voice – including those who are non-verbal. We just have to be creative with our methods and work collaboratively with young people and those who know them best. I know we’d love to get more young people from across the organisation involved in The Collective, and make a positive impact together.