Trafford Youth Cabinet is a group of young people aged 11-18. Each member must live, work or study in Trafford.

It includes Trafford Members of Youth Parliament. We are representatives of the children and young people of Trafford.

We meet up every week and discuss the issues that we have around Trafford and how we could fix them. We invite people to our meeting to put these points across but also form a partnership with them.

This is my third year as a cabinet member. Last year was our busiest year yet.

We decided to focus on four areas. These were sexual health services, facilities for young people, how the media portrays young people and anti-discrimination.

Cabinet members also created a questionnaire which was used at the summer festivals to get the views of other young people.

We were visited by lots of people including The Council Executive, Chris Pratt (Head of Children and Young People’s Service), Janet Callender (Chief Executive of Trafford Council) and Carla Flynn (Editor of Messenger newspapers).

Three of the cabinet members were closely involved in the Myplace project which aims to develop a new youth facility in Trafford. We were involved throughout the process including deciding where the project should be placed.

Members also attended regional and national events, including a debate in the House of Commons. Members influenced facilities for young people by getting involved in the Trafford Greenspace strategy and the play partnership .

We interviewed new sexual health workers to make sure that they were able to work with young people and understood their issues.

Members sat on Council forums, including the strategic partnership board which oversees services for children and young people in Trafford.

Members were involved in choosing the new location of the new hospital in Altrincham and in developing the new children’s ward at Trafford General.

We are currently are developing a DVD to help train bus drivers communicate with young people.

The cabinet has used facebook and its website to get ideas from other young people.

We are in the process of making links with school councils so that their issues can be raised.

We chose promotional materials including beach balls, pens and stress balls which have been given out to members of the public at summer events.

We have a new cabinet for 2010. We will be blogging about our experiences and we hope that other children and young people will contact us with the things they want changing about Trafford. Email us and visit our website Trafford Youth Cabinet.

You can follow us on twitter (youthcabinet) or comment on the blog. We are always looking for ideas!