TravelSAFE

The project was conceived under the premise that young people with ALN experience barriers while accessing local community trnsport; barriers that are not readily addressed by the transport companies themselves. Volunteering Matters in Gwent (South Wales) have a contract with a local bus company and were troubled to hear that volunteers who access our services were experienced hardship while accessing a service that we advocate and felt a need to empower our participants to assess this on their terms; acting as agents of active citizenship, actuating their own change within their community.

The goal of the project is to survey as many people as possible and effectively assess the barriers that people with ALN face when accessing the local bus service. Volunteers worked together to create a survey that would effectively measure the 5 target areas that they wanted to explore with this project. Volunteers approached other bus service users over a 5-day period with a target of sur

Accessibility is an issue that people with physical and additional learning needs face daily. While so many faces these accessibility barriers, few understand to what extend it can hinder their everyday lives, putting them at a disadvantage not only because of their needs but also because of a lack of understanding from the general public. TravelSAFE volunteers will become those agents of change that highlight the inadequacies presented by community transport services and the issues they cause to those with physical and additional learning needs.

A knowledge around volunteer management and a knowledge around working with people who have ALN (additional learning needs).

The TravelSAFE projects takes a 5-phase approach to project completion. This level of organisation allows us to keep track of the project and measure an outcome t the end of each phase against the intended project outputs.

Phase 1 - Preliminary Planning. The Youth worker should undertake the risk assessment(s) before the beginning of the activity. This project relates to identifying the barriers that young people with physical disabilities and additional learning needs face while accessing public transport. We chose to survey members of the public on busses, but those who choose to replicate this project can do so by surveying members of the public on trains, trams, community transport schemes etc. The Youth worker should risk assess and plan the activity in detail before the activity takes place. Things that should be considered are:

1. The bus routes that will be taken.
2. How this activity will be funded (in the UK's project, we paid for the bus travel for all volunteers and all youth workers supporting the activity).
3. Accessibility needs for each volunteer.
4. Whether the youth worker supervising the activity should be first aid trained in case of an emergency.
5. How many volunteers can be supported per youth worker.
6.  Emergency contact information for every volunteer participating in case of an emergency.

The Youth Worker supervising the activity should have a charged and working mobile phone in case of an emergency.

Phase 2 - Volunteer Recruitment and Training: In this phase of the project, we worked toward recruiting a number of  people who were willing to engage with members of the public as our project volunteers. In order to recruit, we asked volunteers who were already taking part in our work in South Wales, meaning we did not need to actively look for volunteers for this project. With regards to training, the Youth worker should ensure that volunteers know the following:

1. If a member of the public does not want to engage with the activity, do not bother them further.
2. Always be polite when engaging with members of the public.
3. If they feel uncomfortable approaching a person, they should not feel pressured to do so.
4. Do not stray from the group and only get on busses alongside the youth worker for safety.

Phase 3 - Survey Creation. The Youth worker should empower volunteers to decide what they would want to ensure from the questionnaire that they will use to survey public members on the busses. The Youth worker should encourage volunteers to consider what it is that they would want to get out of this exercise. Examples of which (based on the UK's project) are:

1. Whether bus drivers understand the needs of bus users.
2. Whether bus users have been harassed or bullied while waiting for the bus.
3.  Whether bus travel is the only method of transport that a bus user has access to.
4.  Whether bus users have been harassed or bullied while using the bus.

Phase 4 - Surveing Members of the Public: The fourth phase of the project included supporting our volunteers to safely access the local bus service to survey the general public, This meant we travelled along certain bus routes with them to supervise their conduct and safeguard them against any potential harm or abuse that they could face when using the bus and engaging with members of the public.

Phase 5 - Monitoring and evaluation: In the final stage, the comprehension surveys were evaluated to evidence the impact the project had on local young people. We collated the survey responses on an Excel spreadsheet.

Barriers to accessibility are a sensitive topic for some people and therefore a sensitive approach will be needed..

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The only additional requirement other than the implementation of this project is a need to evaluate the surveys collected from participaints to evaluate the impact of th project.