Bucks Youth Summit 2025 –
The SEND Space
About The SEND Space 2025
The SEND Space at the Bucks Youth Summit 2025 reaffirmed the importance of our Children and Young People’s Plan, especially the need to integrate SEND education into the school curriculum. This theme emerged consistently, echoing our ongoing efforts within Shout Out for SEND’s plan.
Read more about The Bucks Youth Summit 2025
Key Messages from Young People
Young attendees shared powerful insights:
- Friendships are vital to their school experience.
- Clear routines ease transitions for young people with SEND.
- Grief and bereavement support is lacking and deeply needed.
- “Smaller things impact me more than bigger things,” one young person shared. “I put a can of coke in the fridge ready for when I get back from school… someone has taken it. Things like this set me back so much.”
Activities and Engagement
Over 70 young people participated in four interactive workshops:
- Transitions – An interactive board game explored how different life events affect young people with SEND.
- What Matters Most – A station for sharing priorities and concerns, informing future planning.
- Mental Health Trees – Participants wrote thoughts on leaves about what helps or harms their mental health.
- Signposting Station – Shared resources from Shout Out for SEND, including the Local Offer and SENDIAS.
Insights from Young People
Transitions: Negative experiences included bereavement, friendship breakdowns, and sudden changes. Positive transitions involved making new friends, receiving a diagnosis, and having supportive role models.
Aspirations: Young people with SEND want to be in stable, fulfilling roles—ranging from anaesthesiologist to dancer, car mechanic to café owner. They want to feel safe, unjudged, and able to express themselves.
Concerns: They fear failure, isolation, bullying, and being misunderstood or unsupported.
Your priorities for the Future
Young people emphasized:
SEND education in schools to reduce stigma and increase understanding.
Better bullying support and adult responses.
Inclusive environments with calm spaces and supportive staff.
Mental health support tailored to individual needs, including safe spaces, trusted adults, and awareness education.
Representation and acceptance of neurodiversity and less-known conditions.
One young person summed it up: “Being treated equally but also having our needs acknowledged.”
Using this, what are our next steps?
- Your voices around mental health were used in Shout Out for SEND’s Mental Health Report in May
- What you said around transitions was included in our work on this topic, creating flyers to be used in schools, as well as health and social care – click here to view them on our learning hub
- You emphasised the importance of SEND education in schools, this is something we are currently working on to share with schools to make them more includive environments
- All your ideas, namely around grief and bereavement will be considered by our young people when creating our Children and Young People’s plan for 2025 onwards!